Monsters of Folk Supergroup Debut Three Songs On MySpace

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Monsters of Folk, the indie rock supergroup featuring My Morning Jacket's Jim James, M. Ward and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, posted three songs from their upcoming self-titled debut album on their MySpace page, showcasing the varying styles fans can expect from this massive collaboration. Despite their name, these Monsters don't only just focus on folk: The catchy "Say Please" has a Whiskeytown vibe and "Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.)" sounds like a holdover Oberst's bleepy Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. (The artists involved toured together in 2004, when Digital Ash was recorded and when the Monsters of Folk recordings began.)

The closest thing we have to folk here is the sparse, moving "The Sandman, the Brakeman and Me," a song that would fit comfortably on the second side of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. While some supergroups end up in strange genre experiments or a cluster of half-baked ideas, we're happy to report that in the five years it's taken the Monsters of Folk to release their debut disc, judging by these three songs, it sounds like each member is contributing in a solid way.

Monsters of Folk is out September 22nd, after which the band will begin touring in October.

Oct. 13 - Vancouver, BC @ Orpheum
Oct. 14 - Portland, OR @ Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Oct. 15 - Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre
Oct. 17 - Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
Oct. 18 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theater
Oct. 20 - San Diego, CA @ Spreckels Theatre
Oct. 21 - Phoenix, AZ @ Orpheum Theater
Oct. 22 - Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl
Oct. 28 - Omaha, NE @ Holland Center
Oct. 29 - Minneapolis, MN @ Orpheum Theatre
Oct. 30 - Chicago, IL @ Auditorium Theatre
Oct. 31 - Louisville, KY @ Louisville Palace Theatre
Nov. 2 - Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall
Nov. 3 - Boston, MA @ The Orpheum
Nov. 6 - New York, NY @ United Palace
Nov. 8 - New York, NY @ Beacon Theater
Nov. 9 - Philadelphia, PA @ Academy of Music

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Song Stories

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The Joy Formidable | 2011

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”

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