Richard Lloyd - The Radiant Monkey

Artist: Richard Lloyd Title: The Radiant Monkey Catalog#: Parasol-CD-107 Regular Price: $10.00 Official Release Date: October 30, 2007 Album artwork by Punk Magazine's John Holmstrom.	Tracklist:
	Monkey [free mp3]
	Glurp
	There She Goes Again
	Swipe It
	Only Friend
	Kalpa Tree
	Amnesia
	Carousel
	Big Hole
	Wicked Son
	One for the Road
	Available for digital download:

The Radiant Monkey is the new solo album from Richard Lloyd, esteemed former guitarist for legendary and NYC punk act Television, who have inspired several generations of post-punk acts and artists. The 11 new songs set forth on The Radiant Monkey represent Richard Lloyd’s first studio recordings in seven years, and is his most audacious and transfixing work to date, all the while totally rocking. Not surprising from an artist and rock-n-roll character/mystic/guru of his stature.

Check out The Radiant Monkey Philosophy.

Press for The Radiant Monkey:

NPR's Song Of The Day: "Former Television guitarist and star sideman Richard Lloyd has made his truest solo record in The Radiant Monkey, at least conceptually: He plays everything but drums. But for a one-man operation, Lloyd outshines many working bands with the loose, warm quality of his arrangements, and his workmanlike but expressive vocals have taken huge strides toward communicating the emotion and fire of his guitar. Which, as "Amnesia" illustrates, remains stunning."

All Music Guide: "The Radiant Monkey appeared a relatively swift six years after 2001's The Cover Doesn't Matter, and is largely devoted to tough, chunky rockers that give him plenty of room to show off his skills on the Stratocaster without descending into cheesy showboating. Lloyd demonstrates some soulful, Keith Richards-style picking on "Swipe It" and "Only Friend," "Monkey" opens with some admirably freaked-out patterns that will please fans of Lloyd's work with Rocket from the Tombs, and the fractured pop of "Amnesia" will do the same for folks who remember Lloyd's incendiary live shows with Matthew Sweet. Elsewhere, "Big Hole" sounds like a sly Richard Hell satire from a guy in a position to discuss his style firsthand, and the loose, swaggering boogie of "One for the Road" is solid roadhouse rock from a guy with so cerebral a reputation... The Radiant Monkey is Lloyd's most satisfying work since the epochal Field of Fire in 1985."

Yale Daily New: "Lloyd’s new solo album, “The Radiant Monkey,” is by far the best thing Television-related to have come out since that group’s first album, the masterwork “Marquee Moon,” was released exactly 30 years ago. The album, Lloyd’s fourth solo offering since 1979’s “Alchemy,” is the kind of straight-ahead rock record that hasn’t been made for a very long time, the kind that, as the Stones wrote on the sleeve of “Let it Bleed,” “should be played loud.” It displays a ballsy swagger and loose, loose groove that is the antithesis of the asceticism cultivated by Television. Indeed, any incipient sexiness was carefully pruned away by Verlaine, who kept the group squarely within his modernist art-rock vision. Lloyd rocks so hard and so raunchily on this album, it’s amazing that he could have played in a group as restrained as Television on and off for 34 years without spontaneously combusting."

Impose Magazine: "Like many of his previous albums, The Radiant Monkey features straight-ahead lyrics and no-nonsense guitar playing. Unlike Alchemy and Field of Fire, The Radiant Monkey has a fresh sound while still retaining its classic rock mentality. [Ed. It also has one of the worst covers known to man. Apologies to all of our readers’ eyes.] Lloyd’s vocals and guitar playing are slightly distorted and raw, which can be attributed to the live nature of the recording. Songs like “Glurp” and “There She Goes Again” showcase Lloyd’s adherence to songs with simple, but catchy hooks. Whereas “Amnesia” sounds almost like a Television B-side or out-take, with a lead guitar melody following a similar pattern to the Television song “Friction”. Outside of this one similarity, the likelihood of anyone mistaking these songs for Television songs are pretty slim. Lyrically, Lloyd is at his most playful on this record, with songs like “Monkey” and “Wicked Son” sustaining lyrics that seem like afterthoughts to guitar oriented jams. Overall, The Radiant Monkey sounds like a garage band plowing through a set of recently written originals, all a little unpolished. The result is actually refreshing. In a time when studio releases from Lloyd’s contemporaries sound over-produced, and contrived, it’s nice to hear some good old fashioned rock n’ roll."

Also available: The recent re-issue/re-visitation of Richard Lloyd’s 1985 Field of Fire album which featured new re-recordings of those classic songs, injecting a bit of the modern and post-modern into one of his most compelling solo efforts. Field of Fire is now available as a deluxe double-CD, re-issued by Parasol’s Reaction Recordings imprint in early 2007.

Recent praise for the Field Of Fire: Deluxe DCD re-issue:

MAGNET MAGAZINE: "Richard Lloyd proves on this 1985 solo album--now expanded to a two-CD package--that even half of the original guitar tandem of New York art-punks Television, produced enough raw power to light CBGB for a month. If you couldn't sort out Lloyd's work from Tom Verlaine's on Television's dazzling 1977 debut, Marquee Moon, then Field Of Fire will sear Lloyd's fretboard into your memory banks forever." (Jud Cost)

MOJO MAGAZINE: "While the production is fashionably boomy and his singing gruff at best, there's something not to be denied about Soldier Blue or Watch Yourself, stirring trad-rockers that make Tom Verlaine's solo efforts sound overly academic. Meanwhile, you're never too far from a rapier insertion of Lloyd's Strat - the author of Television's thrilling high-wire excursions is in especially astral form on the Marquee Moon-esque title track and poignant Pleading." (Danny Eccleston)

More FoF:D reviews here.

Photos below by Godlis:


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