Moneytree do not look or feel like your average navy cadets but it was boarding at a merchant navy training college, formed from half a jazz band and half a rock band, that Moneytree first came into being. However, once brothers Ollie and Campbell Austin started playing they couldn’t stop, sneaking away to dodge the stifling discipline, shiny shoes and marching-time beats.
That music -their escape - became of hard rock, American indie and early seventies jazz-fusion that's irrefutably left field and yet, thanks to the likes of Mars Volta and Acoustic Ladyland, still very relevant to today’s musical landscape. Moneytree’s vocals veer from a British bastardising of Jeff Buckley and Cedric Bixler to big, lush harmonies. Instrumentally, they are serene and visceral, retro and progressive, spontaneous and raw yet jaw-droppingly tight, with 5 UK tours (including a support tour with West London prog indie legends Mystery Jets) under their belts.
After much delay, having chased rogue engineers in possession of their recordings across India, Australia and Israel for 14 months, the band embarked on their recording career last spring with Part I of ‘The Great Indoors’, a triptych produced by Joe Gibb (Million Dead, Murder Of Rosa Luxembourg, Funeral For a Friend, Leftfield, Jane’s Addiction.) Part II features cameos from a variety of indie notables (Mystery Jets, Mumford & Sons) and is released in spring 2009.
