The Fat Angel Sings

Album #2 from Melbourne surf, soul, garage punk rock band Money For Rope is called “Picture Us” and was recorded, produced, mixed and mastered by the band themselves in a house by the sea in Victoria, Australia over the summer of 2016. Spawned from the same fertile Melbourne music scene which has fostered not only Courtney Barnett, but also other friends including King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, The Goon Sax and Rolling Coastal Blackouts Fever, Money For Rope released ‘Picture Us’ off the back of a dogged touring habit which has kept them on the road near constantly for the last four years.

The psych-tinged garage rock of Money For Rope is right up my alley and not only because the opening track of Picture Us sounds like the younger sibling of The Doors’ epic ‘The End’.

Hold’ might not be the song I would have chosen to open the LP because it feels more like a noisily melancholic show-closing track, however the ‘Actually’ seems the perfect single to set the tone for the following journey. ‘Have you ever slept this close to a killer?’ lead singer Jules McKenzie snarls with a mean grin before the untamed guitars crash down. It conveys the band’s signature wild and careless attitude towards songwriting (and their listener’s eardrums). This track, “Actually”, was the first track written for this record. We started it staying in a small Air BnB flat in Berlin owned by someone who worked for a music products company; there was an upright piano in a beautiful first floor apartment in an old building. We could spend our evenings in the middle of a hot summer heat wave playing battery amps and piano with the windows wide open listening to the sounds of Kruezberg below. We would wander around the city late at night, wondering how we became fortunate enough to be here, when the secret to ourselves was, just that we had always wanted to.”

‘Earl Grey’ is built on the mellower side of the river, while ‘Stretched my Neck’ beats down with more heavy guitar riffs.‘Trashtown ironically light mood and groovy riff reminds like something born by the Californian Coast line mid-sixties.

The fuzzy haze that draws itself through Picture Us should come as no surprise considering the band’s base in seaside town, Melbourne. While the instrumentation is beautifully noisy and untamed, the vocals form the epicenter of the compositions. Punchy lyrics and punky snarls remind of The Talking Head’s David Bryne and we all know they go just too well with groovy instrumentation.

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The closing track might come as a surprise to many. Only voice and guitar it almost sounds like an intimate campfire setting with friends. Somewhere strolling along the beach that connects the present with the past are where Money For Rope’s winds blow from.

“Picture Us” is set to be released March 2019 on German label Haldern Pop Recordings and Australian label Cheersquad Records & Tapes, with distribution in the UK by Forte & in the US by Cobraside.