Rock/Review I Plead Irony - This Monologue Conversation

I Plead Irony is a UK alternative rock trio built on more than two decades of friendship and musical chemistry. Rauf Jordan (bass/vocals), Paul McDonald (guitar/backing vocals), and Lawrence Arnold (drums/backing vocals) have played together since around 2004, forming I Plead Irony in 2011. Their music sits broadly within alternative rock, drawing on punk and blues while resisting easy formulas. Melody, power, vulnerability, and unpredictability coexist in songs developed collaboratively and allowed to find their own shape.

I Plead Irony’s “This Monologue Conversation” is an album shaped by contradiction, persistence, and a refusal to take itself too seriously. Created by three long-time friends working within alternative rock while drawing from punk and blues, the band’s third record turns ten years of uncertainty into an engaging collection of eleven songs that examines the tensions running through modern life and human behavior.

The album’s fascination with contradiction is hardly accidental. It has been present in the band’s name and earlier titles such as “This Statement Is False” and “The Solution Is The Problem,” and it remains central here. Across the record, I Plead Irony explores conformity, constraints, fear, identity, self-destruction, and the uneasy relationship between progress and reversal. Yet the writing retains enough dry humor and self-awareness to ensure that the band’s observations never become overly solemn.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the album is the story behind its creation. “This Monologue Conversation” was nearly completed before distance, the pandemic, and the temporary disappearance of the band brought the project to a halt. Rather than abandoning the songs, the musicians eventually returned to them years later, driven by the belief that the material still deserved to be heard. That persistence gives the finished record an additional emotional dimension.

The recording process also reflects the album’s unusual journey. Sessions took place partly with Guillaume Doussaud at Swan Sound Studio in France before the remaining work was completed at Rauf’s home. Doussaud later returned to mix and master the finished project, bringing a long-delayed creative process to its conclusion.

“This Monologue Conversation” ultimately feels like a record that survived its own contradictions. Thoughtful, darkly humorous, and deliberately self-aware, it transforms delay and disruption into part of its identity.