Red Pony Clock: "God Made Dirt"
Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records, 2007

Someone was bound to take old Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass records and find the beauty in them. And then bring that ineffable sound into their own music and make it not only cool but use it to enhance what they already do well.

Too much of the recent keyboard, danceable post-punk has been merely the indie set’s equivalent of party music with little more to recommend it.

Mannequin Makeout, however, aims to be something more interesting.

The jaggedly jittery guitar riffing you’d expect is there, but it’s used more creatively by alternating between those kinds of sounds and wiry leads. The rhythm section is often hectic, insistent and angular but in a way that doesn’t induce an instinct to move to the music. Rather, the rhythm fits into the larger framework of the band’s sound.

Monofog’s eponymous first album was an exhilarating fireball of angst and outrage. You could hear the coming revolution in its cataclysm of sound and fury.

"Runner" is a more nuanced affair from musicians who have matured and evolved beyond the primal need to ferociously claw out at a world seemingly filled with deceit and hostility.

Some might call this record mellow compared to their previous work. It might be more precise to say that Monofog has had more time to refine their unflinching introspection and their critique of the world around them.