“You’ve got to treat this life as a laugh,” sings Bobby Aherne on Winning Streak, a track from his latest album as No Monster Club. It’s a lyric that’s indicative of the Dubliner’s approach: a hotchpotch of rambunctious electropop, ragged indie and zippy grunge that stubbornly refuses to take itself seriously. Most of these tracks sound as though they were recorded on toy instruments, but the zippy zig-zag of I’ve Retired and the gurgling Mac DeMarco-style rock’n’roll shimmer of A Bad Example lend weight to the overbearing zaniness. It’s a messy jumble of sounds, but Aherne somehow makes this ramshackle odyssey work.
No Monster Club
People are weird
Mirror Universe/Pop Island