Jim Morrison once said that some of the best songs (and many of those that The Doors wrote) focused on the themes of love, death and travel – or a combination of the three. When one stops to think about it, there is a grain of truth in the notion; love and death can be inspiring sensations because they represent promises of loss or gain (or both – depending on your view) on a personal level, but travel represents something else entirely. True, losses and gains are always possible when one travels (when Ground Control spoke with Moneen singer Kenny Bridges, his band was on tour in Texas, the band's van had already been broken into, with several valuables pilfered), but the psychological growth that's possible while traveling is a most compelling thing; you're out of your comfort zone and need to be able to adapt to new stimulus in order to survive. That process of adapting and change is the foremost aspect of The World I Want To Leave Behind, Moneen's newest record. The notions of change, alteration and adaptation are present from cover to cover on The World I Want To Leave Behind (the front cover depicts a photo of a strange but monolithic-looking structure on the street in London, England that captivated Bridges' imagination when the singer filled in on bass for Alexisonfire for a string of shows in the UK), as well as in all of the music contained between them, and the album as a whole fairly brims with the excitement that comes of damning all the torpedoes, chucking expectations and revelling in the walk along a very thin and risky line. Moneen saw the field as being wide open – they'd played the game like good little soldiers to everyone's expectations and won a whole lot of praise for it – but eleven years after they started, they couldn't help but want to run and play it their own way. “We didn't really know what the expectations were going to be because this new record doesn't play the same way that our other ones have,” says Bridges as he explains where the band was coming from when work on The World I Want To Leave Behind began. “We were hoping that people were going to like it because we were really proud of it and we think it's a really good record, but you never know; it had been a long time since we had released a full-length album and this one is definitely a little different from our other records, but it's exactly where our heads were at musically.
“We wanted every song to be able to stand alone on this record and I think they really do,” continues the singer, reflecting on the ideas presented on the band's new record. “I think you could take any one of the songs and sort of hide it away and have it resurface in a different spot and I think any of them would stand their ground. I'm not trying to be conceited or arrogant, but I really do think each one is a great song. The funny thing is that, when we were writing them, it didn't feel like we were writing anything that was all that different; it just seemed like they were the best songs we could be writing. We wanted to write some quieter songs because that's something we've always been into but have been too scared to try. We've been doing this now for ten or eleven years though and have gone past the point of caring if we're scared or if it's going to freak people out because, we've found, the songs that we've been worried are going to freak people out tend to be the ones that last the longest for us [laughing].”
Moneen has certainly changed things up with The World I Want To Leave Behind. While there's no doubt that songs like “Hold That Sound,” “Redefine” and “The Monument” are unmistakably the work of Moneen, it's the little things about them (like the ramp-up that the title track represents for “Hold That Sound” for example) that end up renovating the overall feel of the album as well as the underlying appearance of the band; while the songs are individually more expansive (more additional instruments like glockenspiel, violin, viola, cello, harp and enormous gang vocals) and more varied in tone (odds are, it's unlikely that any fan will see a beautiful acoustic ballad like "Waterfalls" coming), this material is tighter and more song-focused. On previous albums, songs would regularly bleed into each other and recurring motifs (both instrumental and lyrical) would dot different tracks and those recurring ideas would prove to be the glue that pull the songs together into a cogent whole. This time though, each of the dozen tracks on The World I Want To Leave Behind are clearly defined and different but compelling because they move into a pattern that ebbs and flows; the lines and ideas behind the songs are hard-drawn and separated, but the combination of them as an album works and proves no less satisfying or urgent than previous releases like The Red Tree or The Theory Of Harmonial Value were – even if they're not so deliberately caustic.
Upon such a dramatic change in form, listeners are forced to either follow along or be left behind by Moneen which is a brave artistic turn for the band to make, but a very rewarding one for those listeners open-minded enough to come along.
According to Bridges, response to the new ideas broached on The World I Want To Leave Behind were mixed initially (some fans like the loud/quiet shifts that appear on the album, others – particularly in Germany, according to the singer – miss the all-hard-all-the-time approach the band was known for taking on earlier albums) but it has since revealed itself to be generally positive as Moneen continues its tour. “I just talked to a nice German man and – this is what I love about talking to German press – he said that, with our quieter songs, we have definitely lost an edge,” chuckles the singer as he contrasts this writer's view on the new material against sentiments he's heard before. “Between the two sides of that, I contend that we've lost an edge, but we've gained another one.”
“Normally after we finish a record, I never listen to them again, but I actually really enjoy listening to this one,” laughs the singer when conversation turns to the album's reception as well as his personal opinion of the songs. “It's a record that I would definitely listen to if I wasn't in the band. I mean, I'm not trying to be down on ourselves or anything, but there were times in the past where someone has put one of our records on and I find myself questioning if I'd ever listen to it on my own. It's hard to pull yourself away from it like that, but I would definitely listen to The World I Want To Leave Behind, for sure. I've always been into really atmospheric stuff but, lately, I've been really into riffing and our records don't usually have riffs on them; but there are on this one and I find myself really liking what we've done this time, to the point that I wonder how we did it [laughing].”
With the expanded outlook and design of the songs on The World I Want To Leave Behind too, Bridges says that the band has continued to discover new presentations for their music (some borne out of stress) that will surprise more than a few fans and may make them recoil, but the prospect of following these new muses is just too affecting to pass up; while no one's saying that The World I Want To Leave Behind is the end of Moneen as fans know the band, they may be in for some new things too in the near future. “Since we started this tour, our van got broken into – our van has broken down twice, we don't actually have a van anymore because it's dead – and then our rental van was broken into,” says Bridges with a laugh, perhaps to defuse the obvious tension such events would cause. “It's been an adventure but one of the things that has started happening lately and was sort of started by some of the troubles we were having on the road is that we started doing a few acoustic shows. It's been really, really cool – we've never done it before, but Hippy [Moneen guitarist Chris “Hippy Hughes –ed] and I did a couple when we had some trouble and couldn't perform as a full band and we really liked it; those shows went over really well and we were surprised at how positive people were to them. We may keep doing a few here and there, and we've been thinking that we might – just maybe though because we haven't figured out how it would work yet – work it into the shows or do a few smaller, select dates while we're on tour.
“It's a lot different for us,” continues the singer excitedly. “But it has been really cool and I'd like to take a chance to show how we've worked out the sets for acoustic treatments to people if we can. As I say, nothing has really been confirmed in that way yet, but I'd like to do it if we're presented with the opportunity.”
Artist:
http://www.moneen.ca/
www.myspace.com/moneen
Download:
Moneen – “Hold That Sound” – The World I Want To LeaveBehind
Further Reading:
Ground Control interview conducted the day Moneen presented The World I Want To Leave Behind to their record label, Dine Alone.
Album:
The World I Want To Leave Behind is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
