“It can just go from ‘ah, let’s do something really dancey and discoey’, but then that can be really noisy. Then we could be like, ‘let’s write a slower, angsty or angry song’, but then that could end up sounding really pretty. And like, melancholic. So it’s nice, finding the surprises with the band because if we have a set idea it never really ends up sounding like that anyway.” Garden Fence, is telling me about how his band, Monet, the new enfant terribles of the Welsh music scene, twist their songs into disarming yet vital sonic assaults.
Hailing from the seaside town of Swansea, Monet consists of Pusye (vocals and guitar), Garden Fence (bass and vocals), Ciggy (guitar), and D-Bag (drums), an elastic musical quartet rife with humour, passion and experimentation, they stretch elements of post-punk, art rock, jazz and post-hardcore, combining strange musical concepts with catchy melodies and weird grooves. They forge the kind of aural chaos not seen around these parts since early Mclusky.
They’ve released a string of awesome singles including last year’s ‘Wallace’ from their three-track chaos train of an EP You Need Worse Lies Man. A raw, spasming and clanging assault on the senses, ‘Wallace’ is a stomping, melodic cry for change that fuses a raw barrage of caustic guitar riffs and surreal screams of the likes of the Dead Kennedys with the twisty turny relentless energy of early At the Drive-In. It’s a rattling call to arms that challenges at every turn and will ensure any predator falls.
The new recordings show a step up in sound from their early bedroom output. “The new ones we recorded with Alex Miller in his studio, up in Cardiff and before we would just do it ourselves,” Garden tells me. “We like the thought of working without restrictions. Never thinking about genres and never thinking about anything, just playing what feels right to us.”
The lurching ‘Pitfall’ with its bounding early Pixies basslines, guitars that sigh off stage right and insidiously tumbling vocals that are steeped in wistfulness, it’s the sound of trying to recover from disorientation and confusion. There’s a bittersweet almost prettiness to it that belies their other works.
““We’ve recently released a single ‘Sticky Wheel’ and ‘Albasore’ and then we’ll be dropping that shortly with two other songs.” Garden is talking about a new EP Albasore, that’s already been released as part of ‘Leeks and Beets’ a split 12″. ‘Sticky wheel’ is absolutely visceral, one minute thirty of pure noise, skewed riffing and hoarse vocals. Then there’s the wig out of ‘Bone Man’, that mashes punk, prog and psych and delivers it as a exocet of melodic intensity. There’s a surrealist sense of humour and spontaneity that underpins everything that Monet produce, that makes their work so endlessly arresting.
But Garden Gate, Pusye, D-Bag – why do they go by surreal and satirical pseudonyms ? “I was working in school and one time I was playing cops and robbers with the kids, then I jokingly pulled my ID and said ‘see, I can drive!’ Then they just saw my name and I was like, Oh God. So I just changed my name to Garden Fence. There was kind of jokes in the band you know? Like, ‘what if we all had names?’ I always liked the punkiness of it, like fuck it my name’s Garden Fence? So you’ve got Ciggy Butts, he doesn’t he doesn’t smoke either, and you’ve D bag he’s the drummer and Pooyeh spelt like Pusye.” Garden chuckles. “I feel like when we play we’ve never gone after a stage presence or anything like that. But because we’re batshit crazy, naturally when we play music. I think having the different kind of names almost fits because it feels like a different personality, because I’m really chill in real life but when I’m on stage, you know I’m smashing my head up and shit.“
Garden met Richard Rose of the legendary Repeat records and fanzine, that celebrates its thirtieth year this year, by chance. “I met him working in a school. I was like, Oh, I’m in a band he’s like I do Repeat and I was like, fuck off this you have got to come see us! I feel like, we met each other at a perfect time. Yeah, because I was like, I want to do shit like this and he was like I’ve been doing Repeat for years but I’ve I’ve lost my passion for it it. I was like, fucking do it you bastard!” Garden laughs.
With influences ranging from John Coltrane, Pom Poko to Lightning Bolt, I wonder what are the inspirations behind the band’s eclectic sound are. It turns out it’s a grab bag of shared records. “Well, D-Bag our drummer is a jazz savant, he studied it. Basically all the noise element comes from me, all the pretty stuff from Pusye, and then all the jazzy weird times signature stuff comes from D-Bag.”
“I can tell you exactly what vinyl I’m listening to right now. So I’ve been recently got hard into the vinyl. So ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’, I copped recently, my girlfriend got Moderat ‘ More data’, it’s a dark dance album, that’s a cool one. Bodega ‘Broken Equipment’ that’s a good one. Squid’s ‘Bright green field’. I got this fucking smell album by Boris too, it’s proper proper noisy, Lightning Bolt, a lot of noise”
“D-Bag shows me his jazz records. I’ve shown him like I showed him Black Pus from Lightning bolt’s drummer and he was like, fucking hell it’s banging! Then he showed me ‘The Roar of ’74 ‘ by Buddy Rich and it blew my head off, it’s a fun band to be in!”
The Swansea music scene is having a real renascence right now with new venues springing up and bands emerging fostering an exciting communal scene. Monet played Swansea Arena this past weekend to 1000 people, in aid of local venues. “I could chat endless shit about the Swansea music scene, it’s the one I’ve grown up in, so I know everything about it. It’s the one I’ve seen be reborn and die a million times but it’s always you know fucking off and coming back,” Garden recalls. “But I’d say right now it’s the best it’s ever been! With like venues like Elysium with free gigs doing fucking crazy shit, god I love Elysium so much man!
“Kikker they’re from Swansea, Rainy Day Rainbow are a fucking class band . Do you remember News from Nowhere? ” Garden is in full flow about the local bands he likes. “Anytime they were playing I would go and see them, I love that band. Fucking class.”
Monet are a band to keep your ears out for, with a contorting sound that challenges expectation at every turn, we are eagerly looking forward to their next move. They’ve even been working on a new album to follow their home recorded 2022 debut, in the background. “We have got an album written it’s called ‘Cheer’,” Garden reveals. “We’re wanting to record that. But we’re taking our time because we want it to be very good. We are thinking about possibly looking for a label to drop it. Yeah, I’m talking with some producers who want to work with us to record, it will be cool.”
“We have some plans for that album for how to add some more instrumentation, when we do record. We’ve been working on that for ages. But the good thing about that is, I think we taking our time with it because we have been doing it on the sly on the back burner for a while. But we’ve been playing some of the songs live, and like, seeing how the audience react to see, what happens if we change bits, and I feel naturally playing songs live they change depending on the energy of the room, or how you feel. I think if you do that, it kind of perfects the song in your brain.”
Monet on Facebook
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0PPWRo
