Album Review: Dad Rocks! – Mount Modern
With a name like Dad Rocks!, when I popped ‘mount Modern’ into my CD player I genuinely expected to have my sensitive ears dirtied by cheesy heavy metal. Thankfully as it turns out, this debut album from Icelandic multi instrumentalist Snaever Njall Albertsson, also a member of Danish post-rock outfit Mimas, couldn’t be further from heavy metal if it tried. With acoustic guitar, piano, violin trumpet and handclaps to accompany his vocals, ‘Mount Modern’ is a folk-pop affair with a hint of the quirkiness that you might get from a Darwin Deez record; especially on ‘Battle Hymn of The Fox Father’ where the melodies take some odd turns as Albertsson attempts to shoehorn in more lyrics than there’s realistically room for.
‘Mount Modern’ is predominantly a solo effort by Albertsson, though he does enlist Broken Social Scene’s Charles Spearin to help out on coronet. Sometimes awkward but always gentle, the 11 track album is Sunday morning easy listening at its best, until that is, you listen to the lyrics! The gorgeous melodies provide cover for some of the most cycnical lyrics you’ll ever hear: ‘Do girls get their minds fucked by cultural brats/Does it affect their moms patterns, does it affect their dads’ he sings in ‘Pro-Disney’
Highlights include ‘Funemployment’ and album closer ‘Pants’, and for reasons I can’t explain the whole thing reminds me of Christmas. 8/10
Mark Cousens
Out now on Big Scary Monsters
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