Search - Thelonious Monster :: Beautiful Mess

Not perfect, but Bob Forrest deserves your money anyway

Roy Pearl | Vancouver, BC | 03/31/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

""Beautiful Mess": an apt description for this album and the band. Drunkenly staggering from folk to punk to a lounge duet with Tom Waits and back again, this album needs a mug of coffee and a good, hard slap. Bob Forrest is a great heart-on-the-sleeve songwriter - his lyrics will make you laugh while they make you cry - but his band's backing is just a little too generic to complement the naked honesty of the songs. This is one of those albums that a handful of people will cling to as the best thing ever made while the rest of the world will merely react with an indifferent shrug."

Deserves better recognition. If only Capitol would've promo

J. Mckinley | Santa Paula, California | 12/02/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's a shame that such a great album, deleted by the label and unknown by so many potential listeners, has only one review here on Amazon. Other than a printed advertisement in BAM, a West Coast magazine based in the SF Bay area, Capitol released this CD with little promotion. I snapped the CD up the day it came out, having been familiar with Thelonious Monster's prior output--the excellent Next Saturday Afternoon and Stormy Weather (plus their debut, "Baby..." which was not as brilliant as their later releases.) Bob Forrest, the singer, songwriter and soul of TM creates some very personal songs, and on Beautiful Mess, he aced everything. It's poetic, sad, poignant, triumphant, optimistic; a masterpiece. I'm sorry to use such hyperbole, but it is. Additionally, pick up Bob's other CD under the band name Bicycle Thief, which is nearly as good if not an equal match."