Reviews for [RL56]
Monogamy "Singles Club #3"

• Depression Chamber
  I’ve been talking to a young dude named D Alfred Lyons for a while now on facebook. We message one another about our music. I didn’t know that this guy was as young as he is until after he told me. I was making music at a young age but didn’t release anything until 5 years later. This guy does all that stuff himself. Rok Lok took an interest in him perhaps the same way I did and decided that Monogamy (D Alfred’s project) deserved to be single #3 in the Rok Lok singles club. Side A starts out a little chaotically. Monogamy’s introduction to the Rok Lok singles club reminds me a little bit of the Dead Kennedy’s. Of all bands for this to remind me of it was kind of surprising that eventually I felt like I was listening to someone harnessing the energy of Jello and friends. Perhaps following the listens of the last two tapes you would suppose that there would be more pop in this rock but really we get this almost gritty punk song. With its flanged as all hell guitar and thick sounding bass accompanied by drums (bass and drums played by Hunter Tuinstra) the song is pretty fucking punk. Even the name of the song is punk. I think it’s kind of jokingly serious, or dead serious. Maybe even auto-biographical. “Dried in the Rain” tones things down a bit, at least musically. Well kind of. Some of the strings while strung aren’t done so picture perfectly, so while the sound is toned down from “Face in the Bile” it’s basically just as raw. Lyrically it’s as though he’s listing a ton of stuff kind of strung together by circumstance or randomly, yet still it seems auto-biographical. I think Monogamy’s purpose is to be that way, to make you want to know what the fuck the songs are about. Singing out of tune and being sad makes me want to ask questions (and I did). I wouldn’t say the song is beautiful though and this is what makes it essentially good. If the idea of having a black eye is beautiful to you then this song is definitely beautiful. Side B is a weird ballad. It’s actually like a wedding song, and I suppose perhaps ironically (yet purposefully) this is what it is supposed to make me feel. The vocals are even muffled enough where they sound like someones doing karaoke. It’s kind of almost drunk sounding too, like flat out almost passed out while driving the car drunk. The guitar sounds very goth, and that sax, I think it’s a sax, is a pretty groovy addition to the instrumentation Monogamy does on the song. I suppose the word isn’t complex but it’s more complicated than the straight punk of “Face in the Bile and the melodramatic brooding of “Dried in the Rain.” Even conceptually (I think) it’s on a totally different level. It’s as though you WANT everyone you have ever loved to hear this song just so you can tell them you hate their guts and wish they were dead. The thing to get here is that through Monogamy (his project, not the act) D Alfred Lyons is not afraid to put it all on the line and perhaps even freak the fuck out a bit. The packaging runs the same way as volume’s 1 and 2 of the Singles Club, except that the little bird is not red or blue now, it’s green. Full cover j-card, once again, that looks stunningly well done with the picture of a dude named Zakk dressed in a neato get up. Monogamy has a few other projects coming out this year, or have come out this year. He just finished self-releasing a full-length and has another release slated for later this year on MSM records that has another version of “Dried in the Rain” on it.