Money Mark – Vox: Push The Button [Review] (PRESS, UK)

June 1998

Vox

#92


NOTES:
Vox review of Push The Button by Money Mark (which features Russell Simins on Hand In Your Head).
ARTICLE TEXT:
“Money Mark Push The Button (Mo’Wax) Epic but enjoyable romp from the world’s hippest handyman Some people get all the luck. Mark Ramos Nashita turns up one day to fix someone’s gate and – because it happens to be part of the house in which the Beastie Boys are recording ‘Paul’s Boutique’ – Nishita leaves with a new name, Money Mark, and a recording career to fit into the tool box. Three albums on from those days, Money Mark has blossomed from the cheesy, breezy keyboard king of the Beasties’ hip little empire into a sputtering engine of garage rock, ’70s soul and Lord knows what else. And the results are quite marvellous. Eighteen tracks might sound a touch extreme, but such is the breadth of what’s on offer, it’s more like dipping into five different albums in the space of five minutes. That’s why the electric piano street-soul of the sublime ‘Hand In Your Head’ rubs its hiply clad shoulders with the gentle Eastern club of ‘Dha Teen Ta’ and the time-warped, Dalek-voiced funk of ‘Powerhouse’. Most interesting is the loose-limbed, New York art-rock aura that flits through the gorgeous ‘Too Like You’ (Money Mark doing Lou Reed better than Lou himself) and ‘Tomorrow Will Be Like Today’s joyous old-school Elvis Costello pop hooks. This is Money Mark going back to his teenage rock roots and finding something downright irresistible to do with them. ‘Push The Button’ is a stoned, amiable wander through one man’s record collection, and is a fine demonstration of his knack for twisting it into all sorts of special shapes. **** Stephen Dowling”