Album Review: The Monikers/Taliesin West

The Monikers’ 5-track Taliesin West has a nice mix of instrumentation that helps to create occasionally well-textured soundscapes, with familiar alternative rock guitar tones, straight rock beats and bass, and the infusion of progressive rock piano melodies. At their best The Monikers deliver music that instantly feels familiar and pleasing.

The first track reminds me strongly of Vampire Weekend, with an instrumental opening like “Horchata,” and the vocal cadence to match. From there it adds the expected playful guitar licks, and a consistent presence of auxiliary percussion. It’s a pleasant enough track, although lyrically it’s rather vanilla. There is also a somewhat unexpected tail that takes the sound in a direction more reminiscent of Pet Sounds.

The second track continues to show an influence of late Paul Simon, although it takes a slightly harder approach with more focus being placed on the drums and guitar with mixed results. I wish they would stick with a more pop oriented style as they are capable of crafting very catchy pop melodies and when they combine this with soundscapes that feel light and playful they are seemingly at their best.

If someone told me that the third track was actually an unreleased Ben Folds song from the late nineties I would have believed them. This feels incredibly derivative, although it is fairly well executed with nicely done swells, rapid piano arpeggios, and good dynamic sticking, however the vocals are way back in the mix, effectively burying the lead instrument.

From here The Monikers give us a slow folk waltz, which was what I had expected the entire album was going to be considering the album art and track names. It’s certainly fine for a confessional folk song, think early Shins but with far less lyrical finesse. My main problem with this track is actually that it builds and falls in a very routine pattern and probably doesn’t need to be as long as it is.

The fifth track is where The Monikers are really at their finest for me. Here is a song with interesting musical parts, a fusion of traditional folk elements with alternative rock. The song breaths a certain toxic nature with its constant jabbing of anxious violins and a low humming bass. From this beginning it moves to a chorus of rather angry rock that fits nicely, jarring the listener out of any sense of safety. The bridge and tail then resolve this violence into a very classically composed piano and violin serenity.

The fifth track is also the only one that I would say has anything approaching interesting or dynamic lyrics. It weaves a familiar character, Shakespeare’s Juliet, into a tapestry of appropriately heartbreaking emotion. In general The Monikers are good at painting a scene in vivid detail with their lyrics but usually they have very little to say. It’s as though the singer is recounting a series of events that happened to him, but that he hasn’t thought deeply about. These songs clearly have an emotional connection for him, but that connection isn’t adequately conveyed so that others can feel it with the one exception of the final track. It doesn’t help that the lead singer often sounds as though he’s doing an imitation of someone else (Ben Folds, Ezra Koenig, etc.).

Overall this is a fairly lackluster album without a strong sense of cohesion or flow. With that said The Monikers showed some promise and when inspired to create something uniquely their own, can do just that.

You can find The Monikers’ full album here.

61/100