mongolfier brothers review

The Mongolifer Brothers – All My Bad Thoughts

(Vespertine and Son Ltd – www.vespertineandson.com)

Do you like your records full of loud guitars, harrowing lyrics which make you want to pump your hand on your heart and sing along with them when you hear them play live?

Do you like your records to allow you to dance all over your bedroom or local nightclub?

Well, sorry you have to cut to the wrong place with this release.

The Mongolfier Brothers are Roger Quigley and Mark Tranmer, who met more years than either them or me would care to remember (1997 or 1998) but over the years slowly but surely have produced a few albums of gentle charm that has been described on a couple of occasions like a nervous Divine Comedy if they liked exploring soap operas of people’s lives"

Both of their first albums "15 Stars" (1999) and "The World is Flat" (2002) are both albums which contain a lot within their gentle structure, which borders on more than a few occasions close to a happier version of the Durruti Column be it a better description.

Which possibly explains why the new album is quite a step forward.

I have nothing against either of their first two albums, and I do really like both of them, but "All my Bad Thoughts" is a very different album indeed.

It doesn’t start including lots of ridiculous guitar solos and stuff, but there is often a heightened melodic tension in the music here for example on the single from the album "Journey’s End", where it takes a minute for Roger to start singing but the tension only seems to move more and more forward slowly, and by the time the almost 9 minute tracks has finished, it actually feels like it has gone on for almost half a hour such is the delicate beauty here.

I am not going to make any bones about the album being everybody’s taste. This is an album for listening to alone at the night, with the curtains wide open and while you watch the stars.
It is an album that deserves to be listened to over and over as the message it delivers does not come straight away. It is an album that is full of images that stick in your head of break-ups and make-ups, lonely walks along the sea front and stars that seem to twinkle in and out of sight like passing airplanes and bad thoughts that may springle in and out of the lyrics, but never it’s over, it’s ended, it’s finished or it’s done.

Recommended.