Like the HBO of music, pretty much everything the Loose label release is a guarantee of quality (with slightly less full-frontal nudity), and 2007’s ‘The Casket Letters’ by Sheffield based acoustic/indie band Monkey Swallows the Universe was no exception. The band had a cool name for a start, and as their Wiki entry says, their sound could be “described as “folk-tinged” and “twee” though not “pansy” or “saccharine””. (Good use of quotes whoever wrote that piece, and the word pansy). The album was a delight from start to finish, but it was ‘Ballad of the Breakneck Bride’, a moral tale about the perils of speeding, which has stuck with me since. My mum at once point drove my dad to despair she played it so much, which was only marginally safer (for her at least).
Songs for the apocalypse: Monkey Swallows the Universe “Ballad of the Breakneck Bride”
