The auspicious debut from the Chicago indie rock trio has the spontaneous feel of close friends bonding before the universe has a chance to pry them apart.
When a close friend moves out of town, it can feel like a great song cutting off. Maybe you didn’t even realize you were being carried by the current of a friendship until its waves suddenly went flat when they left. Zoom could launch free hologram-conferencing; Apple could implant iMessage into our corneas; it wouldn’t make a difference. Life isn’t as good when they don’t live within 45 minutes.
“Ferry,” the centerpiece of the auspicious debut album from the Chicago indie rock trio Moontype, is a slow and sweeping song about this feeling. “I miss you before you’re gone,” murmurs singer and bassist Margaret McCarthy, before opening up into a chorus so full of yearning that the rest of the album seems to orbit around it. Throughout the album, McCarthy sounds like she’s haunted by those she can’t reach out and touch, by friendships unraveled by distance. She sings about friends who take incessant pictures of each other on “About You,” and who watch each other’s hands maneuver a venue’s mixing console together on “3 Weeks.” These moments comprise a compositionally busy but conceptually tight guitar album that’s less about what it means to be there for someone than what it means to actually, physically be there.
McCarthy, guitarist Ben Cruz, and drummer Emerson Hunton knew each other as classmates in their small midwest college music program, but only joined forces after reconnecting in their current city. Bodies of Water has the spontaneous feel of close friends bonding before the universe has a chance to pry them apart. But this theme only emerges with time. What you notice at first is Cruz’s aptitude for acrobatic jazz licks and steady rock melodies. Propelled by his skill, Moontype push in all different directions. At least four of these 12 songs dive into difficult time signatures as McCarthy, Cruz, and Hunton take turns leading an advanced game of Mirror Me, the others matching their wild gestures and pivots with ease. Cruz butts into the last 30 seconds of “Alpha” and “Stuck on You” with solos that take the songs on haphazard piggyback rides; the “Alpha” solo almost perfectly mimics hysterical giggling.
So when they pull back into solid 4/4, it’s remarkable how natural it sounds, as if to imply they could crank out whole albums of strong pop songs if they wanted. On the Ex Hex-esque “About You,” Cruz and Emerson coordinate a whiplash switch from tip-toeing staccato eighth notes to ringing chords and cymbals, like they’re flex-and-busting out of straitjackets. “3 Weeks” dials the volume all the way down for an acoustic moment, where McCarthy sings clearly and specifically about complicated platonic love, emulating Jens Lekman out of nowhere. After flaunting math-rock chops impressive enough to build a whole identity around, they abandon it for a folk song that you might hear on mainstream radio. It’s risky to stretch this far, but Moontype sound honest and unforced in both modes.
McCarthy’s lyrics paint in soft strokes, establishing the stakes without insisting on the details, while the band colors in the rest of the picture. On “Your Mom,” Cruz plays in dreary grayscale, alternating between light-raindrop notes on the verses and thunderous chords on the chorus, while McCarthy narrates the scene of a friend in shambles. A supportive but unwilling witness, she never spells it out, but you get a few ideas of what might have happened, and none are pretty: “Your mom is here for the day/And she’ll make sure that you’re OK/And hold you like she did before,” she sings. Cruz’s range and McCarthy’s economy are impressive, but the song’s emotional honesty comes from a place deeper than skill. The album radiates with appreciation for the simple but irreplaceable power of a friend in the room—whether that’s a present reality or a distant memory.
0 comments:
Post a Comment