Concert Review: The Monolators w/ The Health Club and I Make This Sound @ All Star Lanes (8.28.08)

By Travis Woods

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Mary Monolator can cook. This isn’t a commentary on her drumming skills (do we still say ‘cook,’ kids, when referring to music? Isn’t it ‘kills’ now?), which kill, but rather a literal compliment laid at the mustarded (yes, it’s a word) feet of her amazing pretzels, a stomach-expanding staple of the Rock with a Twist shows organized by L.A. Underground and Classical Geek Theatre. The pretzels were better than some of the concerts Web in Front saw this month.

The night began with The Health Club’s garage-scraped and deadpanned howls which, after the initial boom, settled into a rumbling and wall-of-squall “Sister Ray”-styled grind that, coming from a three-piece, was almost spooky. Despite the fact that it sounded as if a Boardner’s crowd had crash-landed at All Star Lanes (the ever-present hum of loud conversation punctuated with staccato yelps and squeals continued throughout the night), The Health Club roared above them with a punk-lashed, yet melodic, fury.

I Make This Sound indeed made theirs last Thursday with a smaller lineup than normal, restricting themselves to a five-piece (with Wendy Wang on bass). This new organization of the band allowed for the music to become less a lovely chaos and more an orderly expanse, with the sound cohering into a fuller blast of the oddball, power-popped songcraft upon which the band’s increasingly good reputation is based. As Jonathan Price crooned and sang above an addictively sprightly guitar and piano scatter, the audience’s mass and near-simultaneous smiles and nods said everything that needs to be, and probably can be, said about their immensely pleasing set of giddy alt-pop.

Let’s get another thing out of the way: Mary Monolator can kill. And, yes, that is a commentary on her monstrous attack upon her drum kit as the band ripcorded through the new song (and title track to their upcoming record) “Don’t Dance,” while Eli Monolator screamed and stomped above the ear-tickled ruckus. Running through a set that contained older favorites (“You Look Good on a Train” never, ever gets old—it’s as staggeringly good as rock/pop comes these days) along with a stretch of tracks of off Don’t Dance, the Monolators simply erupted onstage, with Eli’s limb-flailed vocal shrapnel spiking throughout the room as the band seethed and smiled behind him, before he ended the set with a leap off the drums that sent him crashing awkwardly into a guitar stand with a dazed grin on his face. Someone should’ve offered him a pretzel.

September 3, 2008 | Filed Under Concert Reviews, Exclusive Features 

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