{"id":34817,"date":"2025-11-11T07:47:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T06:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/addtowantlist.com\/?p=34817"},"modified":"2025-11-11T10:24:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T09:24:53","slug":"album-review-mellow-spiders-the-curse-of-the-cursed-monkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/addtowantlist.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/11\/album-review-mellow-spiders-the-curse-of-the-cursed-monkey\/","title":{"rendered":"New album: Mellow Spiders || The Curse of The Cursed Monkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you love The Kung Fu Monkeys, you\u2019ll get a kick out of Mellow Spiders and their\u00a0The Curse of The Cursed Monkey.<\/em>\u00a0Before I say more, I\u2019d actually suggest listening first \u2014 it might change how you feel about what comes next.<\/p>\n

Heard it? Super catchy, right? These 60-second songs sound like unpolished cartoon theme tunes \u2014 pure, sugary pop-punk fun.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the twist: parts of this record were created using A.I. Not entirely, though. Behind the project is Leander Grasse, who writes lyrics and rough demos before feeding them \u2014 along with reference tracks (Kung Fu Monkeys!) \u2014 into an A.I. system to flesh out the sound. (See also his\u00a0Kooky Kats\u00a0project, which spawned hits like this one<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I mention this because we\u2019re increasingly stumbling across releases where A.I. seems to play a role \u2014 and it\u2019s getting harder to tell. Chances are, we\u2019ve already featured a few on the site without realizing, one where we were in the know and left it up to our readers to decide<\/a>, and one where we only found out later<\/a>. It\u2019s a strange feeling when your excitement about new music comes with a flicker of doubt, not unlike how Video Assisted Refereeing (VAR) dulls the instant joy of a goal scored by your favorite team.<\/p>\n

Maybe it doesn\u2019t matter \u2014 maybe a good song is a good song, even if a machine helped build it. But it does raise questions about where the line is, and what it means for real musicians. A.I. isn\u2019t inherently bad, but a little transparency would go a long way. The uncertainty takes some of the joy out of discovery.<\/p>\n

Weird times indeed \u2014 and\u00a0The Curse of The Cursed Monkey<\/em>\u00a0is undeniably catchy. Still, I can\u2019t help thinking I\u2019d love it more if it were 100% human.<\/p>\n