Martin Martini and The Bone Palace Orchestra
» Lisa Miller Trio - Wheatsheaf Hotel, Sat, October 25
» Lisa Miller Trio - Wheatsheaf Hotel, Sun, October 26
In the play It Just Stopped, one of Steven Sewell's characters asks aloud what aliens might think of the works of art created by humankind. No insight, no civilisation, no awe - the work of "bored monkeys". Let's face it, we're all just sitting in a cage throwing shit at the bars.
The second release from Martin Martini and The Bone Palace Orchestra strips it right back to all our most primitive, primal, drives and fears. Melbourne-based Martini has built an impressive reputation over the past three years with his band The Bone Palace Orchestra and cultish first album Dream Until We Die.
Dream Until You Die is on rotation on JJJ, and the band has not only performed at the Sydney Opera House and been The Famous Spiegeltent's house band during the 2006 Melbourne International Festival of the arts, but they performed as part of Paul Kelly's Just Came Out Of A Coma concert, have toured nationally, and are about to embark on a tour which takes in London and Berlin.
With his second recording, We're All Just Monkeys, Martini has made a giant evolutionary leap as an artist. The violin, tuba, and self-conscious gypsy vaudeville stylings are out, replaced by electric and bass guitars, and a harder, darker, yet equally playful and complex sound. We're All Just Monkeys is an album of tremendous musical variety and nuance, brought together by the authenticity, class and mania of Martini's song writing. There was a lot of screaming on Dream Until You Die, now Martini is harnessing the shredded ruins of his operatically trained voice with gorgeous ballads and rock songs instead.
It's not strictly a concept album, but Martini wrote most of Monkey's songs when he was desolate. Mourning the death of a relationship with crazy grief and drinking, he escaped from a car crash that was a cat's whisker from fatal. The songs he wrote are about loss, love, chaos, beauty and futility – and how our veneer of civilisation is thinner than the skin on a rotten fruit. We're all just monkeys.
The album lurches like a drunk driver between decades, musical styles and desolate rages. I Love You Like A Knife is a booze-soaked retro soul number; the kind of song you'd slow dance to at the wedding of a couple you just know aren't going to make it. The first single, the jungle ska number Monkey & Sardine, is the classic tale of the monkey who falls in love with a sardine. Dusty Love and Bedlam -"coffee and tobacco is how the baby's made" - is a hard-edged rock and roll piece with horns and fierce 70's guitar solos. I Caught Jesus Sleeping In is a lazy Sunday morning, angry, swamp reggae epic, chiding christ for his weaknesses and humanity. Girls On Bicycles, which could have been written by Gershwin, has a yearning 1920's feel, and We're All Going To Die is Rage Against The Machine death rattle with a sense of humour; we're all going to die, "so everybody smile".
We're All Just Monkeys sounds as though Elvis and Roy Orbison were thrown into the jungle and spent 40 years sweating, kicking, and devolving.
There are songs for all occasions on this album. Parties, lone drinking sessions, empty one-night stands where you lie there afterwards staring at the ceiling and hating yourself. For weddings? You know something? Not so much.
