Video: Monnone Alone – “Stay Foggy”

Directed by Lehmann B. Smith. From Stay Foggy, out now on Lost and Lonesome.

Mark Monnone recorded Stay Foggy all by himself on his cassette 8-track during lockdown in 2020. And now the groovy title track has video featuring our bearded hero riding around Melbourne on a cloud. I like the fact that Monnone looks like a Pacific Ocean Blue-era Dennis Wilson these days.

Monnone told Trouble Juice the song’s “skeletal features date back to the mid-00s and may well have ended up somewhere on the next Lucksmiths album had we not broken ourselves up in 2009. As you hear it now, this song was built up around the repetitive bassline that I had originally put down as a demo to test different ideas on. The lyrics are a murky meditation on a summer spent in the San Francisco fog twenty-odd years ago and, in my reverie, imagining my dear friends there all these years later as a bunch of wharf-dwelling ’embarcaderos’ sipping cheap chianti and yelling profanities at the seaside hotdog vendor. The chord structures and melodies all fell together so well on top of the bassline that I didn’t need to come up with any bass variations between verse, chorus, etc, which was good news for me as I’m extremely lazy.”

Video: Monnone Alone – “Feel It Disappearing”

Directed by Simon Fazio. From Stay Foggy, out July 16 on Lost And Lonesome. Single out now.

I’m sure the Lucksmiths cast a long shadow over the former members of the beloved group. Luckies bassist Mark Monnone has ventured out on his own, as Monnone Alone, as well as with briefly hooking up with a couple former bandmates in 2017’s Last Leaves project.

Do you feel that feeling when it’s starting to rain?
Feel the pressure building inside your brain?
Feeling that feeling that’s so hard to contain?
Don’t know when it’ll end or begin again?

Monnone is clearly not opposed to feeling his feelings. Is this “anxiety-peppered bubblegum pop singalong for the Zoom-generation” a belated sequel to “T-Shirt Weather”, which he wrote for the Lucksmiths 20+ years ago? “I’m starting to feel a lot better” is a similar sentiment to feeling your sadness disappearing after all.

Who knows? Monnone wrote, played, sang, and recorded Stay Foggy on his cassette 8-track all by himself during Melbourne’s 2020 lockdown. He says the album “touches on themes of dread, loneliness and the losing of one’s marbles.” But the sound of the lead single is as chipper as ever. So wake up, wake up…

Continue reading New Monnone Alone: Feel It Disappearing →

Video: Monnone Alone – “Do it Twice”

Directed bu Lily Youngsmith. From Summer of the Mosquito, due May 10 on Lost and Lonesome. 7″ out now.

The former Lucksmith is back with a new single, and yet more evidence that we should all pack up and move down under where everybody is so much cooler.

Mark Monnone says the song “is written from the point-of-view of a mid-40s gentleman, looking back over the years and realising his greatest achievements – the things that have really left an imprint on his being and still bring a twinkle to the eye – are the things that didn’t work out so well; awkwardly handled social interactions, frustrating miscommunications, situations that went monumentally wrong and made the heart beat ever faster and really fire up the perspiration glands. With this in mind, for the video, it was obvious the first thing we needed to get our hands on was a green screen.”

Obviously! If you’re a fan of clever, jangly pop music do yourself a favor and check it out.

We interviewed Mark Monnone way back in 2002: Perfect in the Summertime: Lucksmiths Interview by Helen Wilson.

Monnone Alone: bandcamp, fb, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Video: Monnone Alone – “Cut Knuckle”

Directed by Lehmann B. Smith. From Summer of the Mosquito, out in 2019 on Lost and Lonesome.

Mark Monnone has been releasing stuff as Monnone Alone since his former band the Lucksmiths broke up. Last year he collaborated with a couple former Luckies as Last Leaves, but now it looks like he’s back to his solo project.

Monnone is the guy who wrote one of the Lucksmiths’ most beloved songs, “T-Shirt Weather,” and he brings that jangly sensibility to this new song as well.

The video features a ridiculous trip down a storm water drainage tunnel.

Monnone says, “I asked Lehmann to make me a video for our song ‘Cut Knuckle’ and unbelievably he said yes. He also said that I’d be bound in rope for an entire day and who could say no to that? One thing that struck me, as well as the close attention he paid to setting up the storyboard and other pre-production things, was Lehmann’s complete disregard for workplace safety and the continual threat to human life.”

Well done!

We interviewed Mark Monnone way back in 2002: Perfect in the Summertime: Lucksmiths Interview by Helen Wilson.

Monnone Alone: bandcamp, fb, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.