Don’t let the name mislead you, these men are far from Monsters. The collaboration, consisting of Bright Eyes members Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James (or Yim Yames as he now know) and singer songwriter M. Ward, seems just like a jam between four old friends.
There is an informality to it all which is unusual. MOF keep that raw edge many bands aspire to by leaving in the banter that takes place after a song has finished. Still, the album doesn’t have the cohesion or bite of similarly influenced bands like Fleet Foxes and the Low Anthem.
The music is a hybrid of country, blues, easyrock and, obviously, folk. Spiritual yearning floats through songs like ‘Goodway’, one of the more uplifting tracks. And ‘Temazcal’ is a highlight: its repetitive guitar riff and consistent beat are spell-binding, and the song contains some of the best lines on the album “Love we made at gunpoint wasn’t love at all/The dancing in the valley, the moon’s the mirror ball”. ‘Man Named Truth’ is less impressive. What are we meant to read into lyrics like “I met a blackskinned man/ with an ice-cream grin/ and a blond Afghan/ with some heroin”?
The haze of vocals can be irritating, and at times seem very cluttered. Perhaps a stronger production hand was needed: there is chemistry in this folk experiment but not of the explosive kind.