Monarch

I wasn't foolin' about this band in my last blog. As you may or may not know, I'm especially wary of most anything indie-rock, but this little band has crept into my heart like very few things I've heard this year. It may be that I'm in a weird/stressful place with the new city which makes me predisposed to "pretty" music lately (Lloyd & Michael, Picastro, and Rachel's are also in heavy rotation), but this is tremendous. They're a two-piece--another cute couple band--with a sound that puts the swollen communal/dramatic vibes of the Arcade Fire through this weird Kim Deal/Chan Marshall/Jeff Tweedy filter. Skygazing melodies, basement folk, and we're-all-in-this-together gut grazing lovliness for the unsmug gallery set.

I suppose I say the latter mainly because that's where I saw them live for the first time: A place called the G-Spot by the Streetcar Museum--which, a while ago, I thought was an abandoned mill --populated by furry forest dudes, horn rims/hipsters, little kids, and a lot of people that just looked like total vis arts pros. Oh yes, also the artwork of one of my idols, William Schaff , who was also in attendance with his dog (who licked my face!), albeit in a bad state of drunken sadness. In any case, I shook his hand and said "your paintings mean a lot to me." I'm going to pretend that he had any capacity for understanding and/or caring just then, but I suspect not.

Listen to their music here