Monkeypox's debut, "Hey! That's MY Wife! Get Your Own!" is a very raw sounding record. The band calls to mind many garage bands of the '60s. But not in the way The Strokes or The White Stripes do. For some reason those bands are very grounded in modern rock styles. Monkeypox is doing something that is very much in keeping with a completely different era. Everything about the record is designed to stand out. From the title, to the sound, to the double disc format, to the ridiculous costumes the band wear on the back cover. 

Monkeypox was formed by a couple of guys in Miami Beach who had already been in a few bands together and wanted to do something different. They created an elaborate mythology similar to Spinal Tap in which the band is already the biggest band in world. Each of the guys in the band goes by a fake name, and comes from a different country. Don't be afraid of the gimmick, though. It doesn't detract from the listening experience. It helps to know this stuff going in, but the band's artistic success doesn't depend on the back story or the costumes. If you took all of that away, the record would still be as good as ever. 

The first disc has a very organic feel to it. Songs like the title track, "Early Morning, Late Afternoon", "Foreign Girls", "No Minutes (On My Cell Phone) and "Starting Over With Tay" all sound like long lost singles from any British Invasion band from 1965-1970. Interestingly enough, they cover the song "Mindless Child Of Motherhood", which was the B-side to The Kinks' song "Lola". It confirms the references and lets you know the band is in the same headspace that you are. The second disc is more electronic, more experimental. It still sounds like The Kinks or early-Who, but other influences start to pop up. A little Can here, a little Bowie there, a little Aerosmith and a little Euro synth pop (don't ask). The band also covers a song by a local Miami Beach band called Jacobs Ladder. A song called "Silk Wanted" is stripped of it's pop-punk, Incubus-ish arrangement and given a prog-psych treatment. It's a studio creation, but I mean that in the best way possible. The record is a very satisfying listen altogether, and many of the songs sound familiar even on the first listen. I would reccomend it to fans of British Invasion rock, Krautrock, Reggae or Frank Zappa.
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