MONKEY STEALS THE DRUM
INJURED BIRDS
Release Date: 22nd Jan, 2001Cat No: DISCO0101
Format: CDS
Christian Ashcroft (guitar and vocals),
Philip Lee (guitar and vocals),
Adrian Cunliffe (bass and vocals),
Angela Walker (drums)
Shifty Disco are proud to herald the fifth year of their monthly singles club with the release of 'Injured Birds' by Ormskirk's skewed rock legends Monkey Steals The Drum. The single is the follow-up to the band's recent 'My Chinese Burns' outing on Action Records and comes at a time when they are riding on the crest of last year's success which featured two sessions for the John Peel show, an acoustic session and play-listed single on XFM and a part in the northern leg of the Circuit Magazine's national tour. Peelie also saw fit to include 'Injured Birds' in his personal Peelennium back in January.
Monkey Steals The Drum have also braved floods and petrol strikes in their year-long mission to take oddly-shaped pop to all corners of the UK. All this at a time when the UK's output of original guitar-based music seems to be at its lowest ebb for years.
Understandably Monkey Steals The Drum (named after an African myth, in case you were wondering) have looked to American bands like Pavement, Nirvana, The Pixies and Sebadoh for inspiration, welding grumpy, grinding bass-lines onto warped, psychedelic melodies, feedback and, with 'Injured Birds', even managing to reintroduce the lost art of humming into pop culture. Equally languid and claustrophobic, 'Injured Birds', suitably pumped full of angst, promises to do nothing to alleviate those mid-winter blues.
Well whaddyawant, sleighbells?
"A blur of seismic energy, forever reaching for higher realms of catharsis" (NME)