ARTIST - MON ELECTRIC BIJOU

CD - BACKSTABBER BLUES

LABEL - ROAST RECORDS

RELEASE DATE - OCTOBER, 2008

SOUNDS LIKE - Flying Burrito Brothers, Phil Spector, Polvo, Sea & Cake, Ray Davies, Neu!

DEFINING MOMENTS - On the Road To Breakdown, The Safety Net, The Widow Maker

STRENGTH - Musical Arrangements, and Compositions.

WEAKNESS - Lack of Vocals, Musical Meandering, Unorthodox Presentation

KATAVI RATING - 3 out of 7 masks

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Canadian 3 piece rock band from Montreal; Mon Electric Bijuo releases Backstabber Blues under Roast Records in October 20, 2008. Apparently this is the bands 4^th release. From what I gather Martin Saz is the visionary of this

project. I quickly discovered the band has a strong internet presence so I was expecting to be blown out of my chair by this release. The band name seems a bit unorthodox, but it's growing on me. 

Overall I have to say I was extremely impressed with the overall musical delivery of the CD. (mind you just the music portion) Whoever put together the musical arrangements i/e the guitar tracks, guitar effects, solo segments, drums, bass guitar, harmonies, small accents, sonic touches did an amazing job. There is a lot of musical variety and depth all over the place to keep a listener entertained, and for the record the band is pretty solid. However the CD takes a really, really, really long to get off the ground. This is mainly due to the fact that there are no vocals present for the first 4 minutes of the CD. Bad move! Pretty unorthodox approach especially at the beginning of a CD when grabbing the attention span is most critical. Typically you want to put your stronger material towards the front. It gets worse. I would go as far as to say 60 percent of this CD is without any vocals on it at all. Songs like "The Aging Process," "The Venom in Me," "Backstabber Blues", and "So Fragile" are totally without any vocals at all. There is also a lot of excessive musical meandering going on everywhere, with overly long intro’s, outro’s, excessive solo segments, and quirky progressions. It’s no coincidence successful artists out there try to keep their songs short and sweet. The best 4 songs on the CD are pushed towards the back. Track 6: "On the Road to Breakdown" is amazing, and is by far my favorite piece. "The Safety Net," "The Widow Maker," and "Let My Guitar do the Talking" are all rock solid gems that let the personality of this band shine through in the end. But again these songs are towards the back of the bus. Again, you want to put your stronger material towards the front, on Backstabber Blues it's quite the opposite, with the weaker material towards the front. This is an extremely unorthodox approach, and not very marketable. The trippy CD cover though interesting misses the mark and doesn't correlate with the personality of the music. Also I would advise putting at least on pic of the artist or band in the CD, presently there is nothing.

The strong suit to Backstabber Blues is the musical compositions and arrangements. Martin Sez should pat himself on the back for this amazing work. The harmonies, the guitar overdubs, effects, solo segments, harmonica, drums all doing what they should be doing, and very well I might add. Make no bones about it folks, it took a lot of work to craft all this music together. But without vocals the delivery feels like an incomplete experience, it fails to connect, and doesn't bring it home like it should. I'm sorry but I just don't see kinds running out by the droves to buy this CD. For the record this is a good, tight band, and the 5 songs that work, work really well. Unfortunately the songs that fail, fail miserably. It’s not enough to just write an impressive musical arrangements. To seal the deal you have to put icing on the cake with good lyrics and a catchy melody line. Martin Sez obviously knows how to do this. There were ample opportunities for him to insert good melody lines. At the end of the day  the instrumental songs are not strong enough to stand on their own two feet. I’m a bit baffled by this whole CD presentation. If I was the producer in charge of this CD, I would say "Marty, don't let your guitar do to much talking, put the second half of the CD towards the front, take the overly long intros and trim them up a bit, and write melodies to a few of the blank songs. If you do this you got yourself a real strong CD."

My overall rating - 3 out of 7 masks.
 

Cyrus Rhodes - 4/1/09

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