Coming To A Festival Field Near You
If you can’t smile at a band called 3 Daft Monkeys than perhaps its time to curl up and sniff along to Celine Dion as she wails on once again about her heart and the bloody Titanic. Put simply this is a band for those seeking fun, who like their music to not just burst with energy but to slap everyone in the room across the face until they too are jigging around like a looney that’s escaped from that field at Glastonbury that your mum told you never to go near. It’s certainly not for the faint hearted.
Working on the assumption that to make good music everything has to be chugged into the melting pot, 3 Daft Monkey’s latest album ‘Social Vertigo’ finds them in familiar territory as the Cornish trio weld Celtic, Balkan, Gypsy and Latino influences together, slaps in some Cornish beats before layering on every other nugget of World Music that is within their grasp. Fast, frantic and fun filled, ‘Social Vertigo’ whirls and soars as Celtic beats stomp infectiously alongside folk fuelled twiddling and dance inducing fiddling brought all together by rousing vocals unburdening often pain filled lyrics that somehow get lost in the riotous exuberance of the bands music. Guaranteed to have festival fields across Europe quaking with enthusiasm, ‘Social Vertigo’ kicks off with a lively dose of ‘Paranoid Big Brother’ complete with almost dance like beats that would not look out of place on an electro track, before the Celtic flare sweeps in to have feet tapping insanely along to the sing out loud chorus. Indeed it’s hard not to dance along to 3 Daft Monkeys even when a sense of melancholy rears its head such as on the slightly dark ‘One Fine Day’, so infectiously vibrant is their music you can not help but be warmed by it.
For some 3 Daft Monkeys will purely be seen as a hippy folky type band that only a certain section of society listen to and to some extent ‘Social Vertigo’ may be a little too cloaked in World Music to entertain throughout. At times there is a feeling that one more hail of finger tapping fiddle playing could send you over the edge but miraculously the band manage draw you back into their feel good world once more with the likes of the Irish laden influence of ‘Let ‘Em In’ right down to the yet another fiddle driven blast in the form of ‘Monkey And The Slippers’. There really is no escape.
Creating an almost kaleidoscope of sound, ‘Social Vertigo’ is a contagious bout of energy soaked fun that can only be bettered on the live stage. Indeed it is easy to see simply from the album irresistible allure the band has at festivals as their feel good vibrancy captures all within a few beats and when mixed with a festival atmosphere it is surely irresistible. Sadly though that is where the majority of people will end their love affair with the Cornish band but for those who can see past their 30 odd minute slots, ‘Social Vertigo’ will insure the party continues long after the festival tents have been packed away.