- Label: 'Last Night From Glasgow'
- Genre: 'Indie'
- Release Date: '5.8.22.'- Catalogue No: 'LNFCB2'
Our Rating:
Stop That Girl is Monica Queen's latest solo album and has been recorded with the Postcard records all star band, featuring members of Bourgie Bourgie, Aztec Camera, The Blue Nile, Paul Quinn and Love & Money and the Jazzateers. Monica herself was in Thrum and Tenement & Temple as well as special guest vocalist for Belle & Sebastian. This album is a must for all fans of sophisticated pop.
The album opens with I Gave You Love That was the first single from the album. This is a long-lost song by Bourgie Bourgie whose original Guitarist Mark Swan plays one of the guitars alongside Johnny Smillie, let Monica's vocals seduce you and get wrapped in the warm production and superlative guitar of this song of full on Love and a little bit of regret for the way you left her standing there.
Monica then turns Captain Beefheart's Too Much Time into a soul stirrer with breathy vocals and soaring straight ahead guitar, this turns this classic into something close to a lost soul classic.
Stop That Girl originally by the Subway Sect feels lighter and floatier than the original, as that super catchy chorus comes in, letting us know for certain that the girl in question is about to steal your man, in the style of countless spurned female soul singers, she isn't as sassy as Sandra Phillips but still gets the point across beautifully.
What Is Home? Is the first original song from Monica and Johnny Smillie the guitars slowly fade in alongside a cello, this sounds close to her material with Tenement And Temple, it's rather elegiac look at a friends life in Berlin, as she questions the notion of what is this place called home.
Deep In My Bones is written by one her long-term collaborators Douglas Macintyre and is a slow chamber pop song of love and yearning with chiming bells, some buried and treated backing vocals and magisterial guitar.
The b-side opens with I Want You To Stop, You're Killing Me, that isn't quite as melodramatic as the title suggests, and it isn't about American Police misbehavior either, being more about begging and pleading with your lover to change their ways.
Monica's version of Edwyn Collins Dying Days is next, this is a glistening evocative song about love and lust and the hopes they have with angelic backing singers super steady drums and guitars that beguile.
Over You by The Velvet Underground is stripped back and feels a bit Mazzy Star like, with the tambourine tapping out the beat as Johnny Smillie decorates the tune with his guitar that does loads more than Lou Reeds does on the original.
Why Not Your Baby takes the Gene Clark classic and twists it round Monica's fingers who has enough heartbreak in the vocals, at the end of another relationship, as she tries to figure out where it all went wrong as the sumptuous backing only adds to the sense of regret.
The album closes with Beat Me Again by the Jazzateers originally, this is one more gorgeous tune with heart breaking lyrics and wonderful production that helps make this album such a pleasure to listen to.
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