Monkey Boy, Gigolo Ants, Exit 159
Grand Emporium
May 17, 1999

Review by Danny Alexander

During Monkey Boy’s opening set, Exit drummer Rob VanBiber commented to me that he loved the Deep Purple organ. I’d been thinking Al Kooper, but I realized he was right. I’ve seen Monkey Boy a few times now, and I am consistently struck by the band’s rich live sound rounded out by that organ. There’s an expansiveness to the sound that suggests a huge grasp of the post-folk rock of the late 60s and early 70s.

At the same time, Monkey Boy sounds very contemporary. As much as I like the band’s 1997 Lou Whitney--produced album, When I Was Young, the live sound is more supple, soulful and funky. This is no doubt due to the growth of the band and the addition of a second guitarist. The singer’s ragged whine manages to deliver a knowing edge to his barbed lyrics. My favorite moment in Monday’s set was the laughing-to-keep-from-crying complaint of “10 years,” a song about finally not making it after a decade of slugging away in bar bands, receiving little encouragement and plenty of reasons to give up.

Boston, Massachusetts’ Gigolo Ants followed this set with Squeeze-meets-R.E.M pop. One stand out of the set was the band’s single, “The Big Lie,” which broke the pleasantries of the overall approach with passionate yearning crescendoes. Also, on “Gravity” and “Super Ultra Wicked Megalove,” guitar burst wide open, reaching surprisingly powerful heights.

Exit 159 closed the show with an atypically subdued set. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, one of the great strengths of Exit is a certain soul sensibility--a sensibility alien to a lot of postpunk bands--that finds a comparable power when it is controlled as it does when it is rocking with abandon. The band’s unrecorded songs, which comprise about half the typical set now, play with subtle dynamics that seemed that much more delicate and poignant in a generally controlled set. A real stand-out in this vein was the quiet ballad “Green.” Similarly powerful, the band’s current staple close with “Cigarette Kiss” turning into Motley Crue’s “Kick Start My Heart,” broke the restraint, rocking out and bringing the evening to a satisfying end.

--Danny Alexander