by Noel Bass

* "The Celebration" The great Depression Celebration part 2 *

Amoeba Records holds the last hard copy CDs of "We're Doomed" for sale. Once those are gone, we are only offering downloads...to save this lovely planet from waste.

Goldin Classics Review Site

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2008

We're Doomed, And It Feels So Good...
Hailing from Los Angeles, CA, Sputnik Monroe are an excellent up-and-coming band that you need to know! This five piece experimental rock unit has been compared to The Mars Volta, Radiohead, and Pink Floyd, and on their most recent EP "We're Doomed" The Great Depression Celebration Part I" it is clear as to why. Their debut full length "Wake the Sleeping Giant" was a bombastic funk fused hard rock album in the vein of Mars Volta. Since then however, the band has grown by leaps and bounds into their own sound that can be heard on "We're Doomed."



Why is it called "We're Doomed"? Well, here's the explanation from the bands website...

"After touring the US in two different vans, three transmissions, several blown tires, through a few hail storms and heat waves with no AC, adding a keyboard player, and ruining their credit scores to play music... Sputnik Monroe swept up the scattered pieces of their lives to make "We're Doomed". It's a 30 minute EP of a two part LP called "The Great Depression Celebration". Through the recording of part one, the band has been hit with streaks of bad luck. Josh Latham(engineer) lost his appendix, and later was diagnosed with a severe intestine disease landing him in bed for weeks at a time. He had to move to Boston to get family health care, leaving most of the mixing to be done over the phone and on the internet. Add a few common colds, broken gear, moving recording spots to five different locations, brushes with the law...and you have "We're Doomed", part one of The Great Depression Celebration."

Here is my track by track review of the highly conceptual EP...

The album begins with the beautifully atmospheric drift of "The Chamberlin." The ominous keys, heavenly choir-esque haze mix with intense jazz like drumming to create the perfect opening to the story. Nearing the songs half way point the intensity takes off with angular guitar lines before scaling back to the keyboards' calm, allowing the song to end just as it began. "Portamento / Nicola, I Miss the Barn" is the next track, an instrumental that serves as a two part suite. While serving one complete sound for the song, it is split into distinct sections and moods. The first half, Portamento, is an ambient filled insightful melody. The song constantly builds sonically complete with wailing siren like synths. The cinematic aspect of the song grows further intensity until its peak, where it returns to the ambiance.

"Standing in Rank" follows, picking up the tempo and heaviness of the album. The haunting synths, funky bass, progressive drumming and sharp charging guitars create the perfect backdrop for the strong vocal melodies. Reminiscent of Cedric Bixlar Zavala's voice, Kevin Netzley's energetic belts are cut from the same cloth as the best At The Drive-In songs. A horn section brings a slow depression over the complex odd time signatures of the rhythm section. This all blends to perfection to create a track that is dynamically epic, as it blends into the three part movement, "Ocean / Le Cirque Du Bruit / Time." The track starts off with their constantly impressive drumming, the deep impacting bass line, and reverb soaked guitars. Shifting rhythms with wavering vocal melodies create a sound equal parts art and rock. The members of Sputnik Monroe clearly know their instruments better than most, and show an incredible passion, without any of the self righteousness. Similar in many ways to the mighty Dredg, Sputnik clearly enjoy experimentation with countless effects and rhythmic times. Netzley's vocals travel the gamut from subdued Bixler-Zavala like shouts to high pitched trails with Bowie like flourishes. Never straying from the doom and depression theme for too long, all the songs return to the original bleak and dark state they began.

The sprawling and theatrically fueled "Everyone is Looking Elsewhere" closes out the album with a heavy and intense broading quality to the music. Chaotic, triumphant, and beautiful all at the same time, while remaining instrumental. The story is summed up amongst the emotional range and intricacies of their playing. This album could very well be the first half of a masterpiece, and I know that I personally cant wait to hear more from this band. Not only is their music great, but their album art is great too.

Free Show Monday Dec. 1st with The Color Turning at The Silverlake Lounge. Josh Latham(engineer, keys for "We're Doomed") is joining in on this show as well as Derrick and Dave with the trumpets. Other special guests to be announced. See you there.

Sputnik Monroe - "We're Doomed"
By Jonny Havoc [Rated 9x]

Sputnik Monroe - "We're Doomed"

The Great Depression Celebration Part 1
I remember seeing Sputnik Monroe about 4 or 5 years ago at the Sante Fe Cafe in Fullerton CA and have loved them ever since. They are a Indie Experimental band from LA. They most defiantly on this cd are more experimental than indie. Its just a specie cd, could be a sound tract to sweet indie film.
The artwork on the cd and on the cover has a very cool feel to it, almost Alice in Wonderland-ish and the whole style of the art and way its all put together has its own style and one of the best i've seen. (if your in a band takes notes and check them out)
Doomed Chapters
1 The Chamberlin
2A Portamento
2B Nicola,I miss the Barn
3 Standing In Rank
4A Ocean
4B Le Cirque Du Brutt
4C Time
5 Everyone Is Looking Elsewhere

Rabbit Hole Music Website

Sputnik Monroe Think The Sky Is Falling!

Sputnik Monroe jumped onto my radar back in ….ole I'll say 2004 with their 4 song debut EP. At the time they were from California and were friends with several other bands that I really enjoyed. They were a bit raw, but oozed talent and potential. They sounded like a perfect stop-gap between At The Drive In and the Mars Volta at the time. By the time 2005 rolled around and they finished their first album, Wake The Sleeping Giant, they were a well oiled machine and for an independently released album, it was phenomenal. It was sharp, witty, and devoid of pretention. I just assumed their brilliance would get noticed by many, but that never materialized.

Fast-forward to spring of 2008 and I had not heard a peep from their camp in ages, I began thinking they may have called it a day. Thankfully, they had not given up on the dream. They informed me they had moved to New York, and partially completed a very ambitious project called The Great Depression Celebration. The first and completed portion is called, Part One: We're Doomed. Happily, I was privy to it's delightfully bombastic sound right away, thanks to a copy sent my way.

There is still a twinge of the Mars Volta influence apparent, but they have become so much more than that. Now, in a totally un-pompous way, you hear heavy veins of King Crimson, The Grand Silent System, Priestbird, The Dear Hunter, Kaddisfly, and even Fair to Midland. They are a giant amalgam of amazing artists, completely embracing all fashions of experimental elements and melodicism. Really and honestly, this EP is 30 minutes of bliss, and I cannot fathom what they will do on Part Two!

Space City Rock Website

SCR's own Scott Whitt lukewarmly reviewed sputnik Monroe's first effort, Wake the Sleeping Giant, back in 2007. In that review, his major criticisms seemed to be that Sputnik Monroe failed to live up to the experimental fusion of Muse and Mars Volta that they claimed to be. I can't speak knowledgably on the subject, as I'm only a passing Muse fan, am barely interested in Mars Volta, and don't own Wake the Sleeping Giant anyway. All I have to go on is Sputnik Monroe's latest release, We're Doomed.
The term "experimental" is thrown around today so much that it has lost all real meaning. Most bands seem to think all you need is a delay petal and all of the sudden you're Pink Floyd. To me, experimental is John Cage telling his audience that the show is over when the piano eats the bale of hay. Still, I will admit that We're Doomed is sufficiently left of the dial to warrant the label "oddball," at least. Set up as a five-chapter story, with two songs mimicking the multi-movements style of Green Day's "Jesus of Suburbia," We're Doomed is almost everything I ask for these days in a CD: it's short, it's weird, and it's got absolutely no chance of ever being on mainstream radio.
The atmosphere of the album cannot be denied. The air is so thick in these tracks I'm surprised my computer doesn't ooze an oily smoke. It's a fairly dark album, with Kevin Netzley's voice rarely exhibiting anything but a kind of desperate neediness. Still, many of the tracks rise out of the synth-y ambience to exhibit the smoother notes of ska or the revivalist energy of the Polyphonic Spree. The true mark of distinction of We're Doomed, however, is the seamless way that the album progresses. Often, you'll have no idea that you've switched to a new song, and with that in mind, you should view We're Doomed as a thirty-minute, one-song opera.
And that is the only real drawback of the album, if you can call it that. It really is one song played for thirty minutes. Now, it's a very very good song, don't get me wrong, but the album lacks any notable tempo changes, or even real key changes. There is not a lot of up and down in the musical presentation. Rather, you have a sort of continuous slope (is it up or down? Good question...) interspersed with brief rest stops for hamburgers and to use the bathroom. You are in for the long haul, and there is little to be gained by skipping to the end. The damn thing plays like a musical of Camus's The Stranger, ending on approximately the same melancholy note it began on.
Who's going to like We're Doomed? People who stand in the corner and look sad to make friends will like it. Librarians will like it. People who own one (and only one) Legendary Pink Dots Album will like it. People who prefer pencil drawings to watercolors will like it. Do you still believe in the Loch Ness Monster? Then you will probably like it. I like it. (Jef With One F // 08/14/08)