The Mommyheads - Coney Island Kid

 

I haven't been around a lot recently due to illness and I've sat on The Mommyheads album for much longer than I ever normally would. One of the biggest questions from followers recently has been asking when I am going to review the album. People know how much I love the band and have developed a similar love.

The reason has simply that I hadn't listened to it properly and I have to listen a few times to one of the band's albums to fully appreciate it. You hear different things on every play and I like to spot most before putting pen to paper.

For all my fan boy mentality, I just worried a little if they could follow Genius Killer. To me it is one of the best albums of the past decade. Not only were the band at their simplest, yet most complicated musically, but they were at their finest lyrically and the subject wise. Indeed, the title track may be one of the best things that I have ever.

I shouldn't have been so ridiculous, this is the their fifteenth album, they know what they are doing. No band can switch been Pop Rock, Big Rock and Prog without ever losing their soul or credibility and all whilst providing some of the most inventive music. Radiohead maybe could, Steven Wilson might, but neither hit the mark as often and as well.

Coney Island Kid is wonderful, but is a very different album. All the twists and turns are here, but the album almost feels like a complete piece, certainly a theme. I've read people call it a concept album and I'm not sure it's that, but it is splendidly joined.

Elk's lyrics are particularly themed and as deep meaning and social as they ever were, but here they seem to fit the work incredibly well. Never preaching, never forefront, but sung in a way that you are going to notice and hopefully note them.

However those who are expecting something fun packed about a Fairground are going to be surprised. This is deep stuff, yet incredibly melodic. It is an album that is meant to be listened in full. I really hope you can as the download is Name Your Price and the download sounds much better than the stream. It seems wrong to listen to it as a sub 200 mp3 stream with all the work gone into it.

I have to mention a few songs without spoiling the surprise. Learning To Live is magnificent, an almost centrepiece that in the best way it can sums up the band. Solemn By The Sea is just beautiful and just washes over you. Onset MA is the most poppy that they get with a truly addictive chorus.

On a career level, it has been so delightful to see The Mommyheads raising their marketing game considerably over the this and Genius Killer. They've also been playing live even more and the responses have been fantastic. 

Please try to listen to the whole thing from start to finish, if only to shut me up. It is quite an exciting time for me with The Mommyheads currently soaring and an Ex Norwegian album out soon. Coney Island Kid is top notch. I wouldn't recommend it so highly if it wasn't A1.

You can listen to and buy the album here.

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