NY Loose Monolith Kids

Tracks: Monolith Kids, Bitch, Green Light Semaphore, The Luckiest Girl, James, Spit, Fade, The Desperate Hopeful, The Late 20th Century Blues, Loosen Up, This Train Terminates Here, Cheap Tragedies

Label: NFA Promotions

There are bands who arrive at exactly the right time and become stars, and then there are bands who have everything they need to be huge — the songs, the attitude, the image, the charisma — but somehow slip through the cracks. NY Loose belongs firmly in the latter category.

Led by the formidable Brijitte West, NY Loose was one of the great underground secrets of mid-’90s New York rock. They had the swagger, the sleaze, the guitars and, crucially, the songs. Their 1995 Loosen Up! EP helped build a devoted following before Hollywood Records came calling, eventually releasing the band’s debut album, Year of the Rat, in 1996. Yet despite touring with the likes of L7 and Marilyn Manson and seeing their brilliant track Spit appears on The Crow: City of Angels soundtrack – the commercial breakthrough never arrived.

Now, more than three decades after those early recordings first appeared, Monolith Kids gives NY Loose’s independent-era material the treatment it has long deserved. Released by Brijitte West and NFA Promotions, this newly remastered collection brings together the complete Loosen Up! EP with selected tracks from the sought-after Born to Loose release, culminating in a previously hard-to-find cover of The Avengers’ Cheap Tragedies.

And what a collection it is.

The title track launches proceedings with a glorious blast of distorted guitars and a rhythm section that sounds like it has been shot out of a cannon. West's vocal comes roaring through the chaos with equal measures of attitude and melody, immediately demonstrating why NY Loose had something that many of their contemporaries lacked: genuinely memorable songs.

Bitch follows with its low-slung Johnny Thunders guitar licks and unmistakable Ramones attitude. West sounds like Joan Jett fronting a particularly dangerous version of Josie & The Pussycats — sweet one minute, snarling the next. It's an irresistible combination, and one that defines much of what makes NY Loose so damn good.

The New York punk lineage continues through Green Light Semaphore, which heads straight into Heartbreakers territory. There's nothing overly polished here, and that's precisely the point. These songs retain the ragged, street-level energy of a band making music because they had to, rather than because someone in a boardroom had decided it was marketable.

Considering many of these recordings were made on shoestring budgets before the major-label deal, they have aged remarkably well. Sure, they're raw. At times they're gloriously ramshackle. But the songs cut through the rough edges, and the remastering gives them a welcome new lease of life without sanding away the character.

James, co-written with Circus of Power's Gary Sunshine, is a particularly infectious blast of power-pop punk, all ringing guitars and restless energy. The Late 20th Century Blues, co-written with D Generation's Richard Bacchus, takes things in a dirtier, more streetwise direction. It's four minutes of pure New York rock ’n’ roll attitude — swaggering, noisy and completely alive.

Then comes Spit, perhaps the collection's most obvious calling card. Fans who know Year of the Rat will recognise it immediately, but hearing the track here in its original, undiluted form is a reminder of just how powerful it was. Dark, twisted and almost hypnotic, its five-plus minutes crawl through the shadows before finally disappearing into the night. Its inclusion on The Crow: City of Angels soundtrack was no fluke.

There are quieter revelations, too.

The Luckiest Girl exposes a more vulnerable side of West, her performance balancing tenderness and strength without ever becoming sentimental. “The Desperate Hopeful” similarly reveals that behind the leather, leopard print and distorted guitars was a songwriter capable of genuine introspection. These songs add depth to a collection that could otherwise be dismissed as simply another blast of ’90s punk nostalgia.

Loosen Up itself has the feel of a band caught in the act — a live-in-the-studio performance where the energy seems to come from the interaction between the musicians rather than any attempt at perfection. The bass-driven breakdown and increasingly unrestrained vocals give the whole thing the feeling of a song being invented as it is played. It's rough around the edges, but that's exactly why it works.

The album closes with NY Loose's take on The Avengers' Cheap Tragedies, a fitting choice for a band so deeply rooted in the history and attitude of American punk. It's a suitably energetic final statement and a reminder of the musical lineage that runs through the entire collection.

What makes Monolith Kids particularly compelling, though, is the sense of possibility that hangs over it. Listening to these songs today, it's difficult not to wonder what might have happened if NY Loose had been given the right backing, the right label infrastructure and a little more luck. They had already proved themselves on some seriously big stages, including Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar tour, where West's larger-than-life presence made an immediate impression.

Instead, the major-label machinery ultimately failed to provide the environment the band needed, and NY Loose's story came to an end far too soon.

Monolith Kids can't rewrite that history, but it can bring these songs back into the light.

And perhaps that's what makes the record so satisfying. This isn't merely an archival exercise or another nostalgia trip for people who remember the ’90s. These songs still sound dangerous. They still sound fun. They still sound like a band that could walk into a sweaty New York club tonight, plug in and blow the roof off.

NY Loose may never have become household names, but Monolith Kids makes a convincing case for why they should have been.

The world might have missed NY Loose the first time around.

Don't make the same mistake twice.