Track Listing:
1. Broygas Tantz
2. Hubbadillia
3. Tres Cerveza
4. 3 Daft Monkeys
5. One Fine Day
6. Ooomim
7. Social Vertigo
8. Astral Eyes
9. Hey Listen
10. Faces
11. Maximillian
12. Mazoltov
Gibbon it Live & Dreckly
3 Daft Monkeys
3 Daft Monkeys are a lively and infectiously joyous live act, their guitar and fiddle driven mix of folk and world music never fails to get their audience leaping about. After seven years and three studio albums the monkeys have at last got round to releasing a live album.
We get a whistle stop tour of their career, songs from Oomim, Broohaha and Hubbadillia - which must incidentally be the best album titles ever, nestle down with two new tracks and a couple that they've never got round to recording.
The songs were recorded in a variety of venues, from the Wickerman Festival to the Cadgwith Cove Inn in their native Cornwall. 3DM have the knack of making a large venue feel like a small intimate space that you can share with them. The fact that they are lovely people and visibly enjoy what they are doing is a huge factor in that, but I reckon the biggest factor is that they manage to express the hopes and desires so many of us have in our hearts.
One of the new songs One Fine Day expresses this empathy so well, wouldn't it be good to sail away to a land where money don't count and we can give value to what we really amount to? Tim Ashton, Athene Roberts and Jamie Waters prove that songs can rail against injustice or inequality whilst being upbeat lively and soulful.
That they deliver all this without any record company backing never ceases to amaze me, it also comforts me; there's a healthy alternative scene that exists on its considerable merits without the hype of a corporation behind them.
Gibbon It Live & Dreckly is a great snapshot of 3 Daft Monkeys. A new studio album later in 2007 is eagerly awaited.
Iain Hazlewood