THE DONUTS seem to be after the Bob Pollard award for midwest pop industriousness as "The Monkey Wrench Gang" is, by this writer's reckoning, their third album in a feverish 18 months or so.
Thankfully, they are capable of ensuring the quality levels keep pace with the quantity, as the majority of the 12 songs making up the brief-but-just-about-right 29 minutes of "The Monkey Wrench Gang" are full of ideas and get-to-the-point hooks which ensure the album's pretty much enjoyable from wall to wall.
Not that there's any huge stylistic shifts or mad leaps of sonic invention. This sharp-suited Philly quartet featuring J.Bearclaw (vocals, guitar), Johnny Taint (guitar, vocals), Peter Extravaganza (bass) and Fathead (yes, just Fathead - why would you want more?) on drums are still in love with predominantly Anglophile power pop along the lines of early Elvis Costello and Graham Parker and have absolute faith in the redemptive power of a fine pop song lasting approximately 150 seconds. And why the hell not?
Mind you, this time the album comes wrapped in a, er, spoof 'concept' of sorts. "The Monkey Wrench Gang" is apparently based on a (wait for it) 30-year old ecological tract of the same title by author Edward Abbey. I haven't read it, but I assume it's concerned with the raping of great wilderness frontiers in the name of progress as the title track - a quintessential, nagging Donuts rocker with an impassioned Bearclaw vocal - appears to concern the equivalent of an Alaskan Luddite movement ("they're gonna save Alaska with a can of Gasoline!").
But don't panic: despite this talk of concepts, this was hardly ever gonna be "Tales Of Topographic Oceans" was it? Stupid rhetorical question, of course, though the pro-ecology thread does continue through arguably your reviewer's favourite track here: the melancholic-but-rather-delicious alt.pop of "Maya Van Rossum's Blues". Beefed up by organ and Jose Mignorance's silver peals of lap steel, it's a story of a tanker disaster ( a la the 'Exxon Valdez') off the Venezuelan coast, but the concern ("Dehydrated birds in the oily mud/ swab down their throats in the rescue tub") walks hand in hand with a cracking tune and works beautifully.
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Other than that, it's the usual tales of odd moments in the lives of ordinary folk and the Donuts stock-in-trade witty commentaries that are the order of the day. And, where songs like "Carnation Revolution", "Detective Con" and "Red From Mississippi" are concerned, this approach can't fail. The first is the very epitome of catchy, stuttery power pop, "Detective Con" is jumpy nervy indie-noir, akin to Beck fronting Guided By Voices and the intriguing "Red From Mississippi" is apparently written from a woman's point of view and is all the more interesting as a result.
And, while most of these songs are easily recognisable as The Donuts, that doesn't mean they've consigned invention to the four winds either. Indeed, songs like "Arrive" and the closing "Eats Right Out Of Your Hand" prove they can still convince when they row out into deeper melodic waters. "Arrive" finds vibraphones tinkling, the band playing with restraint and coming up with something akin to Morphine scoring a David Lynch movie, while "Eats Right Out Out Of Your Hand" is a gentle, plangent little kiss goodbye with the guitars chiming and a harmonica drifting like a heat haze. Quite, quite lovely.
So no, for all the ecological concern, "The Monkey Wrench Gang" probably won't wipe out third world debt or even let down the dignitaries' tyres at the nearest G8 meeting for that matter. However, 'issues' aside it's a rather delectable, fashion-free pop album which can't fail to satisfy as a guilty indulgence between meals. Get snacking.
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