By David Werther.

Monsters of Folk, Monsters of Folk (Shangri-La Music, 2009)

           Monsters of Folk is the indie artist supergroup consisting of M. Ward (She and Him), Yim Yames a.k.a. Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Conor Oberst, and Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes). Their self-titled CD is a generous helping, 15 tracks, of their considerable talent. MOF begins with a dreamy song about the nightmare of suffering called "Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F)," where the ghost of Marvin Gaye seems to come in on the refrain, "Why do we suffer?" The last cut, "His Master's Voice," has a Fleet Foxes' feel, and answers the question posed in "Dear God." We suffer because there are many voices calling for our attention, and in the end we only hear what we want to hear. Given these bookends, one might expect a collection of angst-ridden songs in between. No way. The line that best sums up this project comes from the rocker, "Whole Lotta Losin',": "well we never got paid but we had a lot of laughs though." The band's closeness and camaraderie is evident in the blending of the voices of Ward, Yames and Oberst, who sing together on all 15 songs, their reliance on each other for all of the instrumentation, and collective song writing credits. A band with a name like "Monsters of Folk" has to be either pretentious beyond belief or, as this one is, too unassuming to care what it calls itself.