IAN BROWN: Unfinished Monkey Business (Polydor)
It's impossible to review Ian Brown's debut solo LP without making reference to John Squire's debut with The Seahorses, Do It Yourself (Geffen). Not because they're similar, but because it would be hard to find two more different LPs.
While Squire's effort was a damp squib because it was too perfectly formed at the expense of spontaneity, innovation and spirit, Brown's album is, as the title suggests, an essentially unfinished record crying out for at least a little of the disciplined approach of Do It Yourself. Funnily enough, it ends up being a better album than Squire's because of that.
There are, however, some truly appalling moments on Unfinished Monkey Business, songs which should have never left the rehearsal room. 'Lions' for example, is barely a song at all. Manchester diva Denise Johnson supplys vocals, but it's totally unsuited to her voice, a clumsy composition clumsily executed. As for Brown's attempts to play around with a drum machine, they just make the songs sound like rejects from some dodgy mid-'80s band struggling to get to grips with new technology.
As you may have guessed already, as an album this is a less than straightforward proposition, simply because it lurches from good to bad to indifferent. Just when you're getting into it, along comes a harebrained track which has you scrambling for the fast forward. Take 'Ice Cold Cube' (originally aired at Reading '96) an ok song which Brown obviously didn't know how to end. Consequently it collapses into a slop of lumpen drumming and clumsy guitar, and sounds like what it is - a demo.
On other songs Brown gets away with the album's rough edges. He's most successful on the shimmering spaced-out '90s psychedelics of the single 'My Star' and the track which follows it, the exceptional, shuffling 'Can't See Me'. The latter features a rhythm track courtesy of ex-Roses Reni and Mani, recorded during the Second Coming sessions. It sounds post-'Fools Gold' Roses, the sort of thing everyone was expecting from their second album, had Squire not gone all Led Zeppelin. If only it had been released five years ago.
There are other spine-tingly moments, like the dreamy yet sinister jangle of 'Corpses In Their Mouths', reminiscent of the folksy 'Elizabeth My Dear' from the Roses' first album. Meanwhile, 'Nah Nah' recalls the fresh-faced jangly guitar pop of the Roses before John Leckie got his hands on them. The acoustic country twang of 'What Happened To Ya Part 1', followed by the lolloping, muggy bass-driven and echoey 'Part 2' also deserves the thumbs up.
But none of these great songs can possibly make this a really great album. Because on that score, Unfinished Monkey Business falls down in a similar way that Roses' Second Coming did: the songs don't really get on that well together and there just isn't the consistency. In that respect it's the polar opposite of that band's first LP, an album which flowed so sweetly it's hard to imagine anything coming as close for years.
The most frustrating thing however, is the sense that it all could have been so different. If Brown had drafted in a quality producer, a new John Leckie, to re-record the songs and either kick the crap into shape or into touch, he'd have ended up with an album to really shout about. Instead, despite some top class moments, he's produced a record that will frustrate the fans and turn off the uninitiated. What a monkey.
3 / 5
CHRIS SHARRATT
Back To Media 1998