Release Date: May 16, 2011
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Island
Music Critic Score
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If you had to sell [a]Mona[/a] like some high-concept ’80s action movie, with a single, simple soundbite that told people who they are and what they do, you’d only need three words: Princes Of Leon. To the ears of profit-hunting record execs everywhere, that pitch must’ve sounded as lovely as a Shakespearean sonnet. It also happens to be extraordinarily accurate.Bands tend to outgrow those epithets, because there’s usually something about them that’s more complex and unique than anything three words can reasonably describe: nobody, for example, still refers to [a]Kings Of Leon[/a] as ‘The Southern Strokes’.
The Tennessee-reared, preacher's-son-fronted Mona have attracted not-always-flattering comparisons with Kings of Leon. Their debut album finds them entering Bon Jovi and U2 territory, too. These swaggering, would-be huge, one-size-fits-all rock anthems are aimed so much at stadiums it's a wonder they don't arrive with a PA stack and a burger. Listening to them outside that ideal environment, they're decent enough songs, even if Shooting the Moon was formerly U2's Bullet the Blue Sky.