Wikipedia has the Monks down as "avant-garde garage" so I guess that settles that. The five American soldier nobodies who were stationed in Germany in the mid-'60s and who make up this band didn't just happen on to the way they sound, but put it together carefully. They poured everything into one album, Black Monk Time, and then waited 33 years and more for the rest of the world to even begin catching up. I think we're just about there now. The project does indeed fit the post-Beatles DIY "garage" aesthetic that inspired suburban youth across America in 1966 (in a post-Stones vein, more in line with the Chocolate Watchband and Standells). It often sounds like blueprint and instruction manual for the Velvet Underground and Stooges, not just ahead of its time but nearly out of it entirely, hovering above and gazing beatifically far, far into the future. They were probably using the term "shoegaze" even then, and laughing at the comparative feebleness. Few bands clobber one over the head quite so artfully as the Monks, with a bottom that feels like the extra Gs of a massive planet, flattening the features of the face into a mask and threatening to collapse bones into jelly. Yet for all that, it moves ("lumbers" obscures the precision) with energy, menace, and sardonic charm. It means you no harm but it means you no good either, just a small part of the moth/flame draw. I picked this for the title, which typically for the Monks clarifies everything and nothing ("Well you know my hate's everlastin', baby, yeah yeah! / But call me"). You can't go wrong with anything on the album at large.
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