Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds Review
Swing From the Sean DeLear
In the Cherry Records
twenty February 2021
Kid Congo Powers has a resume that speaks for itself. Later co-founding the Gun Club with Jeffrey Lee Pierce in 1979, he played with the Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Powers as well established the psychedelic garage ring Kid Congo and the Pinkish Monkey Birds. In February, the Pink Monkey Birds released their latest tape, Swing From the Sean DeLear.
The record is the band's kickoff release since La Araña Es La Vida and Powers' motion from Los Angeles to his new dwelling house of Tucson, Arizona. Recorded in Tucson at Waterworks Recording, the tape is a iv-song EP mixed by Jim Waters (who has worked with Sonic Youth, R.50. Burnside, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion). The EP's title refers to Sean DeLear—the late iconic luminary and singer of the LA punk band, Glue. DeLear, whose paradigm graces the EP's embrace, was a glamorous non-binary scenester who embodied the same underground vivacity that Kid Congo Powers does.
The title of the tape pays homage to DeLear, as does the beginning track. "Sean DeLear" is an upbeat rock number scattered with punchy guitars. The lyrics, "I honey how you swing from the chandelier / How many people can y'all fit up there," conjure the image of DeLear swinging from a giant chandelier similar he's carousing at a political party in the afterlife. This vision of celebrating the memory of friends no longer with us reappears later in the EP.
If the first runway gives us an paradigm of Sean DeLear partying in heaven, track two, "(Are You) Gear up Freddy?" gives us the music for the political party. The rails is an instrumental psychedelic freak-out that starts with Powers screaming, "Ready, Freddy?" From at that place, the haphazard guitars and frenetic free energy never misemploy until the end when Powers says, "That must be information technology." Information technology's 1 of those songs meant to be cranked at top volume. It's also a painful reminder of how piddling carousal anyone has been able to do in the past year and how incredibly quiet it's been.
"I Can't Afford Your Shitty Dreamhouse" is a funky head-bobber. The first line: "We're at the end of the end of privilege", sets the tone for the remainder of the song. It invokes images of upper-crust fakery, something akin to a gaudy McMansion that's replaced a celebrated house. When Powers sings, "I really don't desire, I actually don't care," his revulsion is made clear. Meanwhile, the music is a corking saunter, reminiscent of the music playing at the end of a party that finds a few belatedly-night stragglers still dancing in the corners.
Side 2 of the record is one song—a 14-minute mellow piece titled "He Walked In". With flutes and bongos coming to the forefront, the music has a laid-back Chicano flavor reminiscent of Santana. The song came into being afterwards Powers had a dream about late friend and bandmate Jeffrey Lee Pierce, who passed away in 1996. Powers' voice is reminiscent of Vincent Price's, giving the song an eerie vibe. When he sings, "Although y'all've been dead for quite some time, y'all walked into my room, you walked into my heed," the listener is brought dorsum to that dreamlike mood that "Sean DeLear" first summoned.
The mode the lyrics for "Sean DeLear" and "He Walked In" came about could be explained in an interview in which Powers talked to Eric Davidson at Please Kill Me about his process for putting words to his songs. "I accept always been interested and been mining the hypnogogic state of mind for song lyrics. I'm fascinated with what's betwixt those planes. That state right when you wake up or right before going to sleep where you are a bit of both things. I think having a really bad hangover, you sideslip into this state as well. Free thinking with no rules."
The ambling pace of the song is echoed in an accompanying video shot and directed by cinematographer David Fenster, which finds Powers strolling through the Sonoran Desert at the magic hour in a pink adapt and bolo tie. The flute (played by Marking Cisneros) gets the spotlight as the tempo picks upwards towards the song'south end. This is where nosotros notice Powers dancing in the night in the video like a guest at his own political party. The song is a perfect mode to close out the EP. It'due south the end of the political party—the slow gathering of property and the shuffle out the door into the nighttime.
Swing From the Sean DeLear is a much-needed breath of fresh air after ane of the darkest periods of our lived history and points toward a fourth dimension when we will hopefully celebrate together again.
FROM THE POPMATTERS ARCHIVES
Source: https://www.popmatters.com/kid-congo-swing-sean-delear
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