Confidence And Self-love Shines Where Robby Monroe's Many Voices Leave You Undecided
Robby Monroe loves two things: himself and experimenting with his voice. This is great, if you can tolerate it. However, his production or delivery lets him down.
Robby Monroe is a man in love with himself – or at least he loves his name. Check the title of his new extended play, Meeting Monroe.
This love – or self-love, if you will – is present also as part of the extended play’s first song, an intro, ‘That’s So Monroe’. The song – which gives you an electronic music feel to it – is unimpressive and runs for less than two minutes. He uses the song as a way to guarantee you the ‘Monroe promise’, if you will, a promise that you're in a for a good experience listening to the rest of the extended play; he tells you that he’s never boring; but while the song’s duration is short, Monroe complicates things further by trying to do a couple of things. At one point, he croons; but I was impressed by the fact that the song has a Spotify clip.
‘Make It Make Sense (Elucidate)’, the second song off the EP, has a thumping or groovy feel to it, and on most occasions, his voice comes out beautifully. It’s a far cry from ‘That’s So Monroe’. What I like about the song is that Robby Monroe has not tried to match the lyrics with the party beat.
‘Boots & A Good Coat’ has a mellow and chilled beat to it, like a jazz song . The song starts with a guitar. Again I'm impressed by his voice, and this is one of the best songs on the extended play. Why aren't all songs on the extended play like this? The imagery the song title creates be making me think of boots and a coat.
The beat changes in ‘Lechery’, the fourth song, a song he sings about his innocent smile when he’s close to the lady.
At one point, he says It’s fornication time.
‘You want me like it’s lechery’, he sings on the track in which he introduces a rapper who talks about ‘can’t stop; won’t stop’.
‘Just say my name’, Robby Monroe sings on the erotic-charged song.
Again, Robby Monroe experiments with his voice. This is offputting in cases where the voice variations seem frivolous.
There’s a beautiful singing part on ‘Sheep’, but fond of variations, Robby Monroe switches into another variant of his voice whilst you're still enjoying that part you like. I wish Robby Monroe could on a single song choose one style and stick to it.
There are social media on ‘Sheep'. There’s talk of hashtags, tweets and mentions. His energetic voice is worth noting. You hear him burst ‘Monroe is mentally crazy’!
On ‘Nothin Aint Funny’, Robby Monroe goes retro in his beat selection.
‘Let me open your eyes’, he sings
‘There aint nothin funny’, he repeatedly croons on this rock-infused beat. Perhaps there is nothing funny, as Robby Monroe sings, but you can’t stop smiling when he stops singing and just croons.
My issue with the EP is that most of the times, you find it hard to hear what Monroe is saying; but the good of the EP is that here’s a man who is in love with himself; a confident fellow, if you will. And if love and confidence are contagious, then this EP is surely to set you in that way.