The dreaded second album. How many bands have crashed and burned with it? Dare to be different and suffer for it – either critically or by self-destructive expanding of the “sound”. Monta had a go at it and then scrapped it. Sometimes it’s not what it should be. Next comes some guy releasing an album as Monta to further confuse things. But forget all of this. That’s what Dedric and Delaney did. The brothers’ Moore found new muses in late 60’s Italian cinema soundtracks. Add in a liberal dose of psych-rock and 60’s swinging Bollywood scores and things become questionable. But never fear, the brothers put it together and then some by making downtempo in indie-rock fashion. First, the name gets expanded to Monta At Odds. Why? Pushing and pulling the band has always been present and seemed to fit ever more so on the new album titled “Gringo”. The beauty of this release is that the “monta sound” created on the first album is ever present but augmented by live musicians and boundary-stretching ideas. At odds with the loop, at odds with live jamming, at odds with the hours of editing that can burn a soul out. The real theme of Gringo is immediacy. Gringo had to sound like “now” and relate what was going on with Monta At Odds. Live musicians were added and recorded in live takes to document the sound of the band at that exact moment. Mix that with the studio-wizardry of the “monta sound” and things become very interesting to the point of stepping outside of conventional description. The best way to put it is that Monta At Odds sounds like a band hitting their stride and showing the confidence to make music as one tuned-in unit. Songs like “Faith” and “Take A Chance” reveal the new-found confidence of downtempo meets indie in a one-two punch that sets the mood for the rest of Gringo. What’s with the name Gringo? It stems from listening to Italian cinema that always seemed to touch on the Spaghetti Western genre. Taking a cue from the various soundtracks and jazz records, the idea of the theme kept growing. Noticing multiple versions of the theme on each soundtrack, this idea grew into trying new approaches at a new song nicknamed Gringo. Instead of one song crammed full of every type of idea, the reverse happened with the band doing varied takes that turned out extremely different but all with great merit. Adding in vocalist Erin O’Neill on “Return Of The Gringo”, seemed to be the final piece needed to finish off this thirteen song treasure. So turn it loud, still stick with a nightcap or cappuccino, relax, haze out, repeat.