(Rhino)
This is the album they always had in them?
On the double-entendre-titled Justus, Messrs. Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith and Tork do it all as a band, for the first time on record since 1970 - they sing, they play their instruments, they write the songs. They're "the Pre-Fab Four" no more.
And as such, it's all over the map. No mere amalgamation of vanity solo shots like The Beatles' White Album, Justus pulls the band together while playing up individual strengths and weaknesses. I like - nay, love - about half of it, but maybe not the half that old-guard Monkeephiles (or those merely familiar with their goofy '60s NBC-TV series) might.
The first track, Michael Nesmith's 1968 "Circle Sky," sounds like a garage band stuck in the '60s a la The Lyres or The Grays. Thank the estimable Nesmith for the '90s production values. Always the holdout, having rejected all reunion tour proposals, here proves he's a quite talented studio knob-twiddler. The credits say "Produced by The Monkees," but Nesmith ultimately had the role of producing and mixing the project while the other three were on tour this year.
"Circle Sky" is the obvious old Monkees song to "cover" - obscure enough (it's from Head, the soundtrack to their trippy cult film directed by Jack Nicholson) and absolutely to the point of this project with the chorus "It looks like we made it once again." It's also great fun to pick out the individual Monkees' voices and instruments in the mix - if you can get past the fact that it sounds unlike anything they've ever done. Midway through the album, another grungy Nesmith cut, the vitriolic "Admiral Mike," could have come from the poison pen of John Lennon, with a dash of Nick Lowe's satiric wit. The song's subject of derision is "only selling ads," as Nesmith takes a swipe at clueless greedheads.
So Mike's my hero on this album, but Micky Dolenz deserves proper credit as the band's impassioned heart and soul, past and present. He infuses nearly every one of the 12 tracks with vitality, something sorely needed for an aging band who are still easy targets for narrow and misguided accusations of going through the motions or trying to regain commercial or critical status with a "reunion" as a gimmick.
Dolenz' "Regional Girl" is also heavy sounding, and the kind of tune the band would have committed to record if they'd lasted (as a cohesive unit) into the late '70s and the birth of New Wave. Tork, the broadly talented folkie of the group, is as capable with a Bach fugue as a protest song. He has a pair of pleasant and melodic tunes here, "Run Away from Life" and "I Believe You." The weakest creative link is David (no longer Davy?) Jones, who as a songwriter can only spin out cotton-candy ballads ("Oh, What a Night") and whose self-admitted musicianship begins and ends with the tambourine (having seen him not quite get the maracas right during a 30th Anniversary Tour show this summer).
But Jones' vocal harmonies are essential to the album, and of course it wouldn't be the Monkees (ballads, bitterness, bad judgment and breakups included) without him. His album-closing "It's Not Too Late" - nearly saved by Dolenz' roof-raising gospel harmonies at the coda - is still the fluffiest tune to come along in a long time, the kind of thing now-aging Tiger Beat readers would have loved for its sheer sappiness. And it might even play on A/C today. But that's the radio-weary cynic in me talking. Better start over with "Circle Sky." Here we go. It looks like they made it once again.
