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 Caught in the Carousel - Music Reviews and More
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Tigers and Monkeys
Loose Mouth
Little Lamb Recordings
As far as my personal research can tell, Loose Mouth is the debut of a small New York band named Tigers and Monkeys. It isn't particularly ambitious or over-reaching; its aims are frank and modest. Tigers and Monkeys just want to rock. And rock they do. It isn't exceptionally difficult to think of X-amount of bands that sound remarkably like this, but it doesn't much matter. It's fun and asks practically nothing of you--like the aural equivalent of fast food. This kind of bare-bones music is ideally suited to a more transient state, coursing through the alleyways and narrow lanes, the back roads and numbered-routes of your town, blasting at socially indecent volumes through the shit-speakers of your Ford Topaz, windblown bits of ash caked around the tattered thighs of your denim jeans.
"Piñata" is a fairly paint-by-numbers kind of tune, but it works primarily because of its simplicity. "Rave On" features some adorably quaint lyrics which assert that "you say you got a new friend who's been toting your bags/I got a new one who adores me/While you've been tap dancing/I've been clicking my heels." "Kissing the Boys Goodbye" summons the likes of Kim Deal, a small but hoarse voice barely kept above a whisper. My favorite track may be the closing "From Where I Stood," something of a ballad but less syrupy and saccharine than one would suppose.
As a matter of terse personal honesty, I don't much listen to music like this (though I am apt to find favor with anything sung by a female vocalist). Sure there are some noticeably tamer, less-enthusiastic tracks but it doesn't really detract in any obvious way. It's a very brief and undemanding listen, one could be entirely passive about it, but when it's turned up just loud enough it drowns out the likes of these minor concerns. If it were warmer where I live, I'd probably play this more.
—Brandon DiSabatino
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