Album Review: The Mon, Songs of Abandon
The first thing to know is that The Mon‘s acoustic-strum-folk-meets-psychedelic-drone offering, Songs of Abandon, is part one of a two-part cycle, with the intention that a darker, reportedly more ritualistic instrumental complement titled Songs of Embrace to follow in 2026. Between those two titles, one might imagine Songs of Abandon to be somehow colder or starker in some way, and while I won’t discount the lone human presence of Urlo (also of Ufomammut, the Malleus graphic arts collective, and the Supernatural Cat record label behind this release) at the foundation of this material, the experimentalism behind his songwriting in this project, resulting in moments like the intertwining vocal layers of “Hourglass” or the synth-infused (I think) classical-but-foreboding shimmer of “Little Bird,” doesn’t necessarily sound as lonely as one might expect. Or perhaps it’s a more cosmic kind of loneliness.
That is, while Songs of Abandon has been posited as composed during a darker period for the artist making it, Urlo‘s search for catharsis, comfort, whatever it might’ve been, in these songs lends them a fullness of sound and an immersive aspect that resonates beyond the intimacy of a solo, guy-with-guitar singer-songwriter. While not at all without its quiet spaces from the organ line and tapping cymbals of the introduction “Smiling Dog” and the surprisingly straight-ahead acid folk of “Two Stones” — and onward from there — the 10-song/35-minute collection is never entirely still, and it never loses that human presence and sense of expression.
There’s a balance being struck between those sides, surely, but it’s a malleable thing as well, and the guitar gets used differently between a chord-strummer like the first half of “The Hidden Ghost,” which shortly gives over to a distorted amplifier hum for a different kind of echoing, ethereal noise that brings an almost sneaky hypnotic aspect ahead of the fading in guitar strum of “Hourglass,” and the subsequent “The Moon and the Devil,” where the guitar and keys hold sway together for a darker atmospheric affect.
If you caught wind of the grim mystique that pervaded The Mon‘s 2023 LP, EYE (review here), or the ceremonial drone of the earlier-2025 single “Major Arcana” that coincided with a tarot series by Malleus, then Songs of Abandon will likely be a departure. While never quite as Eastern-tinged as, say, Lamp of the Universe — there’s no sitar, for example — there is communion with something beyond the self happening in the material, but it happens in a grounded way.
I don’t know the recording process for a piece like “Two Stones” or the later “The Fluorescent Sand,” which has a keyboardy intro but is so much more about the vivid emotional expression of Urlo‘s vocals that despite being just two and a half minutes long, it stands out from what surrounds, but I’d imagine it varies. Songs of Abandon was put together over a couple years, and so it seems likely that during that time, different songs would have different instrumental foundations. That said, on balance for the record as a whole, it’s Urlo‘s seeking voice and questioning guitar doing the underscoring.
Or so it feels to the listener, anyhow. It’s not that the running water, the synth or certainly not the electric guitar figure throughout and at the end of the penultimate “Beautiful Star” are somehow superfluous to the song itself. That is not, not, not what I’m saying. But even for a self-recording multi-instrumentalist, the practical reality is that one’s hands can only be doing so much at one time, and if Songs of Abandon became a repository for Urlo during the time of its making of this kind of acoustic-guitar-based material, then that doesn’t mean what’s been built up around that isn’t essential.
Especially for a work and a project that is so committed to ambience and to realizing expanded definitions of heavy in its arrangements, these elements are more than the finer details they might otherwise be. As much as the tag ‘experimental’ implies throwing sounds at a wall and seeing what sticks, Songs of Abandon finds its solace in both the human outreach and in the otherworldly vibes pervading around it. Those looking for some glimmer of Ufomammut‘s crush may be able to transpose some likeness to the layered-in shouts of “Mayhem,” but if anything, this record sees The Mon step further into itself than did EYE or Urlo‘s prior output under the moniker.
At very least, it’s operating in a different way, and with a more direct focus on folkish human expression. As to what this might portend for Songs of Embrace, it’s more fun to speculate than it is useful, especially since that second-of-two release is impending and likely not years off and not such a long wait. Urlo has used three descriptors for the answer to this outing, and they are “darker, ambient, and ritualistic,” so that’s what I’m going on.
That would be a shift in sound from much of Songs of Abandon, naturally, but if those characteristics are providing the ’embrace’ in that title, then one can only say it will function similarly to how Songs of Abandon seems to dwell in the aftermath of abandonment, seeking and maybe even finding some relief in the writing and playing. In that way, Songs of Abandon is the most personal work The Mon has yet conjured and that also retains its ambient/experimental mindset makes it that much more individualized.
To be continued, then…
