Monster Movie

Performer: Can
Distributor: Caroline Distribution

Notes: If not quite an event on the earth-shattering level of TAGO MAGO, MONSTER MOVIE is still a monster of a record. Can's debut finds the peerless rhythm section of bassist Holger Czukay and fearsomely intense drummer Jaki Liebezeit instantly locking onto the chugging mantra of "Father Cannot Yell," taking the Velvet Underground's strung-out garage-rock stance to its ultimate conclusion. Guitarist Michael Karoli veers off into messy, acid-fried splatter, while Irmin Schmidt's keyboards provide both whinnying psychedelic damage and the throbbing, minimal "motorik" pulse that defines Krautrock. MONSTER MOVIE is the only Can album to feature original vocalist Malcolm Mooney. He sounds great on the deliciously trippy "Mary, Mary So Contrary" and on the unhinged "Outside My Door" (without which there could have been no Fall, no Pavement, no Butthole Surfers, no Girls Against Boys, etc). The staggering, 20-minute "Yoo Doo Right" leaves him hoarse, but he weathers the jaw-dropping instrumental turns and twists of this simmering acid-blues behemoth like a true juggernaut. Mooney left soon after (returning for 1988's RITE TIME), but Can had hit the ground running, its remarkable chemistry primed for the wildcard spark that was the vocal freestyling and manic, volcanic energy of Mooney's replacement, the inimitable Kenji "Damo" Suzuki.

Rolling Stone (p.93) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[Mooney] sounds like he's on the verge of emotional blowout, chanting in cries and whispers ransacked of melody and humanity." Uncut (p.129) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[It] evokes the same abrasive energy as Jonathan Richman's SHE'S CRACKED." Mojo (Publisher) (p.126) - 5 stars out of 5 - "[I]t's Can at their most focused and garage-bound."

Though they were one of the key bands of the 1970s Krautrock movement, Can always saw themselves as individualists. They were influenced more by composers like Stockhausen than by psychedelic rock, but this seminal German band combined their avant-garde tendencies with rock trappings and funk-inflected rhythms in an amazingly natural way, influencing subsequent generations of iconoclasts.

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