Richard Lloyd
The Radiant Monkey
[Parasol/Surf Monkey]

Bizarre dispatch from the Television co-founder and hard-living guitar icon. The title track is stunningly awful, along with the amateurish cover art conjuring images of a self-released Midwestern bar band. But Radiant Monkey's center offers a batch of appealing guitar rock reminiscent of Robert Pollard's straight-ahead projects or Lloyd's own work on Matthew Sweet's gritty keepers. As usual his songwriting tends toward the unremarkable, but Lloyd's spirit and guitar sparks mostly compensate.