The Monochrome Set

The Monochrome Set started out as a witty take on post-punk that owed a debt to swinging '60s pop and twangy surf music. Steered by the darkly clever songs of Bid and the crisp playing of the band, their first records were smart, hooky, and weird. Their jumpy debut single, 1979's "He's Frank," set the template for the band through the early '80s for a string of albums like early masterpiece Eligible Bachelors that balanced Bid's songs with the group's growing sonic presence. The band made it to the '90s to release albums that captured their original sound and tweaked it gently for the times. After another split, then a reunion spurred by Bid's recovery from an aneurysm, they came back in the 2010s to issue albums like 2016's Cosmonaut and 2022's Allhallowtide, that showed that their brand of pop still sounded fresh.