Austin’s Pushmonkey has been teetering on the verge of national success for a few years now. The band has toured with Ozzfest and opened for KISS. It has received a helping hand from the likes of legendary producer Clive Davis and ZZ Top manager Bill Ham. But it’s this record that will — if any ever will — push the group out of the “regional favorite” category.
Pushmonkey’s ability to meld genres makes it commercially viable yet nonderivative. “Chemical Skin” and “Pissant” hammer hard rock mayhem out of addiction and murder. “A Woman Named Dope” carries sweet pop hooks. “Mine to Waste,” the lead single directed at singer Tony Park’s anti-muse, turns the tables on that band girlfriend who desperately wants a song written about her.
Pushmonkey’s sound is anchored by the fuzzy, bombastic and unrelenting guitars of Houstonians Howie Behrens and Will Hoffman. Along with Darwin Keys’s (another Bayou City product) heavy pedal drumming, they add the beefy texture that defines the flawed feast that is El Bitché.
Yes, this record does have its faults. In too many numbers Park is lost in the mix. A few songs are utter clunkers. Two such are the raplike “Masterbreaker,” which compares a woman to (yawn) a motorcycle, and “Core,” which drowns its own Zeppish pretensions with sonic sluggishness.
But the band picks up the pace with hidden extras. The hidden audio track is a hilarious ode to tits (“If I were Lincoln / I’d free the tits / If I were a police officer / I’d serve and protect the tits”) that was obviously recorded impromptu at a party. Bonus video footage includes Hoffman (the band clown) attempting an interview with a cardboard cutout of LeAnn Rimes as well as a clip of Pushmonkey’s roadie, passed out drunk on a pile of the band’s dirty stage towels. Embarrassing as that may be (at least it is to those of us who are not roadies), it’s more immortality than a mere “thank you” in the liner notes.
A super-solid mixture of big rock riffs, modern rock musings and catchy melodies, El Bitché showcases the quintet at peak performance: fresh enough to place alongside the likes of Fuel and Incubus, but dirty enough to wallow with AC/DC.
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2001.
