专辑简介

Billy Mahonie专辑介绍：by Dean Carlson

If someone were to take lazy crib notes on the band Billy Mahonie, one would have to jot down: "Like Mogwai, except without so many Metallica-like basslines." Good news or bad? Well, Come on Billy Mahonie Give It Your Best Shot is a compilation of three CD singles (and B-sides) that the band gave out at concerts which implies a certain fact: every third song is usually the most interesting. "Manywhere M2" and "Manywhere M4" both start off like everyday, relaxed instrumental acoustic rock, but then fade in trickles of Italian fluttering to make the them sound like W.G. "Snuffy" Walden's theme to Relativity. These two songs are indeed lovely. This pattern of threes, however, is ruined by a droning song like "No No No No No" and the delightfully sparse "Man With the Woman Head (8 Track)" picking up the slack at the album's end. Speaking of which, the three 8-track songs throughout the album display an interesting desire to keep things loose even though (besides the album's closer), it's these songs' "not quite there yet" songwriting quality that show they are mostly for die-hard fans. The thing that strikes the hardest in the band still seems to be in the rhythm section. Namely, drummer Howard Monk. His engaging drum patterns push the band away from self-indulgent hums and triteness. So at the end of the day, one realizes a compilation like this might not be for closet Metallica fans, yet it still doesn't irritate like so many similar albums released by the band's peers. The respect for lovely rhythms makes this release above average for post-rock instrumentalists.