Thursday, March 1, 2018

Album Review: Moaning - Moaning

Moaning
Moaning
*** out of *****

The debut self titled release form the LA based Moaning is a mix of dreamy pop with noise blasts and shoe gazing passages.

The trio, Sean Solomon, Pascal Stevenson, and Andrew MacKelvie use guitar bass drums and synths to cast a pretty spell over their mid level tunes. The first few titles do an admirable job in describing the music contained in the songs as opener "Don't Go" is a fuzzy plea for sticking around and "Tired" pumps up the keys and slips into dream pop.

The more angular "Artifical" has waves of emotion all pushed ahead by gorgeous bass work and a soaring questioning chorus. The positive track allows the band to flesh out their musical impulses with slashing guitars while keep an engaging pulsing rhythm yet never dirtying up their overall sound.   

The band plays with new wave multiple times as "The Same" recalls The Smiths blase and "Close" pumps synth work but keeps the fuzzy guitars to scratch up the edges. Another interesting mix of styles is "Does This Work For You" which plays in Sonic Youth noise rock territory however the buzzsaw guitar noise/feedback is mixed down to easily digestible levels, never overwhelming any of the sweet synth sounds, even with an extended outro. 

The "Misheard" uses a poppy rhythm and "For Now" adds an engaging dance beat behind mumbled lyrics and electronic strings while "Useless" goes back to their new wave with a hard edge style. Closer "Somewhere In There" has the makings of light arena rock behind the tom rolls and driving guitars, ending the record with an easy blow out. 

Sub Pop has been steadily releasing great music, since RtBE started to really listen to music actually, and Moaning is another nice addition to their stable; think of Moaning as a much prettier, poppier No Age and you can see the label and musical connection.
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Support the band, buy the album, peep some video below:

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