The music on 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man's Chest defies fair description, featuring layers of sound, lurching rhythms, and Thomas' own elliptical lyrics. The opening track, "New Orleans Fuzz," clumps along heavily under a lurching beat while disconnected impressions float by: "There are monsters in the rain," "The river's in the air, there's nothing else to breathe," "Live free or die, live free or die." Even without drums of any kind, the following track, "Numbers Man" manages to swing like a lost Ventures recording, albeit a lost Ventures recording bent on murdering your family. And so the tension builds, until smack in the middle of all the ugliness sits "Brunswick Parking Lot," one of the most luminously beautiful songs I have heard in a long while. With just his melodeon as accompaniment, Thomas croons (in his own broken way) a long and heartfelt apology to a girl named Deborah. The second half of the album is more atmospheric and leans more heavily on Andy Diagram's tape loops and trumpet. "Nebraska Alcohol Abuse" barely moves, covering Thomas' downcast murmur in gentle noises like falling snow, making the subtle groove of "Golden Surf" seem positively energetic by comparison. A few lyrical hints point to some of the songs being linked into a story, but if that is true I have yet to figure out the plot.

By the time the album winds down with the seven-minute long minimalist tour de force "Prepare for the End," all the building unpleasantness of the previous forty minutes dissolves into a pale sunrise tinged with, if not exactly hope, than at least resignation that things might be okay. David Thomas and Two Pale Boys have created a beautiful album of downcast music that finds solace in desolation and redemption after despair.

Recommended for fans of: Tom Waits, Pere Ubu, Johnny Dowd, Nick Cave, Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht, Black Heart Procession, that depressing high-school crap we all loved back in the 80s.

Dave Thomas and Two Pale Boys record for Smog Veil Records.

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