Album Review Baby Dave - Monkey Brain

Just as it was easy to miss the sentimental side of Kent noiseniks Slaves, it was equally possible the pair’s knack for satire was flying straight over the main stage mosh pits that their music found itself on rapidly following their major label signing nearly a decade ago. And yet it’s here that ‘Monkey Brain’ - the first solo outing of singing drummer Isaac Holman - finds itself. A series of lo-fi vignettes detailing - in often indelicate detail (“Sitting on the 29 / And I need a piss,” he helpfully repeats on ’29’) - ordinary suburban life, it successfully cements the singer firmly in his specific lineage: that from Mike Skinner to Suggs; Ray Davies to Damon Albarn. In fact, it comes as little surprise - between the subject matter, Isaac’s deadpan delivery, and the record’s playground rhythmic patterns - that Damon’s similarly simian mitts are all over much of the production. And when it all comes together (‘Beautiful Princess’, ‘Clarence’s Dead Dad’) it’s utterly charming. That said, the line between ‘sweet’ and ‘irritating’ is but a fine one, and the childish instrumentation here does often threaten to cross it on many an occasion.