Reviews

 Artist: Brass Monkey
Album: The Definitive Collection
Label: Highpoint
Tracks: 14
Rating: ***
Contact:  www.propermusic.com

Best of albums, or in this case a definitive collection, are not the easiest of albums to review. True fans will have all of the tracks listed and in this day of mp3will probably have already assembled their own definitive collections and will almost certainly have formed an opinion.
That leaves the more casual music lover whose heard a track or two, but is keen to hear more and that all to rare beast someone that has heard of the band and is looking to find out what the fuss is about.
Well to both of those I'd say you've got yourself a pretty good album here. Brass Monkey aren't the most prolific band you'll ever find, five proper albums in twenty two years seems like laziness in some quarters. That is until you realise the number of other projects that these guys have been involved with.
Brass Monkey really did put something back into English folk music, the horns. Strings, percussion and wind could be heard in a lot of music, but the brass had vanished. There were pennywhistles and fife's, but where were the sacbutts and the serpents. Brass Monkey turned them into tubas, trumpets and horns and reintroduced them to the genre.
Brass Monkey also did it with the cream of the crop in it's day. The early albums were vital, rediscovering a rich vein. Q magazine hailed them as the finest folk group of the 80s. There's still something very fresh about the sound. Age has not whithered it.
The Definitive Collection is a good album, but to my mind one that is slightly less than the sum of it's parts. The selections are good. There has been a great effort to sit the album together as a whole. You can't fault a single track, but it doesn't hold together
Listen to it. Let it inspire you and then go out and get the full albums, at least one. Get to hear a set, rather than a collection.

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