The band feels completely at home, laid back and relaxed, they are here to have fun fun fun… they had even brought plenty of home-made pretzels, free for everyone.
They also had promised to play totally different sets for all four weeks of their residency, presented by Radio Free Silverlake, so you could go every week and they would play different songs each time. And I am far from knowing all their large repertoire, as they have been around since 2000!
I just like their liberating style, Eli Chartkoff, screaming most of the time his vocals while playing guitar, has a great sense of humor and a carefree attitude that is extremely seducing, and it is not because he does not take himself seriously that you should do the same for his songs. They are a mix of old school rock n’ roll, with true melodies that carry more hooks than a Kinks’ song, and a sort of unruly punk attitude, sprinkled with many unexpected and awkward moves.
With Chartkoff firing his vocals through the room, they played a ferocious ‘Ruby, I’m Changing My Number’ from their last double EP release, among other hits like ‘I Heard Her Calling From Another Room’, and the starting-quietly-but-building-itself-up ‘Let’s Be Best Friends In Space’.
In a few seconds, they turn the room into a feet-tapping, hand-clapping, body-jumping crowd, even though the lyrics flirt with the sad and the ironic, but again, all of them are here to have fun: Mary Chartkoff is terrific on drums, Ashley Jex on bass all smile and playful is dancing around Chartkoff, whereas Ray Gurrola on lead guitar, and Jillinda Palmer on keyboards complete the sonic eruption that the Monolators can be onstage.
They ended up their set with a cover from Jeff Tweedy’s side project Golden Smog, that was talking about Pecan Pie… pretty obscure to me, but it was not perceived as such, with Gurrola crashing on his knees and Chartkoff rolling on his back all limbs in the air to finish the songs, just after screaming at the crowd they would not bring back home any pretzels… what was he thinking?… they were all long gone.