
Moon King – Secret Life
Back in January we covered Alvvays at the Hare and Hounds. They were marvellous, but at the same gig I experienced one of those chance encounters with a support band that reaffirms to me why we are right to be excited about the prospects of being mugged by acts on the so-called under-card. Over the long years Joy Division, The Ruts, The Crimea, Secret Machines, Earlimart, The Choir of Young Believers, The Twilight Sad, and heaps more personal favourites all came my way as support acts, combating audience indifference, the odds and sometimes rubbish sound to get their hooks into my brain.
Moon King are already in that category; that quickly. They were tremendous. After the gig I overcame my usual parsimonious reticence enough to go and buy a CD from the merch, manned by one half of the main Moon King partnership Daniel Benjamin. This CD, Obsession, appeared to be an almalgamation of two EPs released by Daniel and collaborator Maddie Wilde. It’s a combination of eerily familiar dreamy effects laden tunes, underpinned by punchy Indie rock guitar and drums. It is really excellent stuff.
As is the nature of these things I found out that they were due to release their first “proper” album, Secret life, in the spring. Curiosity overcame me and taking unfair advantage as usual I volunteered to review the album; of course with the prospect of hearing all of it early in the process.
Fortunately for me, the hyperbole regarding the band in the preceding three paragraphs of this review has been absolutely justified by this new album. I would have looked a bit silly, but more importantly subject to crushing disappointment, if anything else had been the case.
The opening track, Roswell, is six minutes of soaring techno waves over that same Indie-tinged driving guitar and drums. The tune is almost two minutes old before the twin vocal comes in over the repetitive loop. The next four minutes condense everything you get from those first EPs into one song. What makes this more special to me is that I first heard this live. This is not a studio special; the duo with their touring companions on guitar and drums really do sound like this.
Later on Apocolypse reverses the trend, being a guitar fuelled rock tune but sharing the same metronomic loop in the background. They seem designed to work together:
To me this illustrates one difference between this and the Obsession compilation in that it seems obviously an album, consistent in sound and approach, and in that regard more mature than the earlier work. It’s less accessible and in a way it takes more listening to than its predecessor. Having said that the title track, along with Impossible and Threads are possibly as good as anything you will hear this year and the plaintive closing track Medicine comes around a bit too quick for my liking.
Alvvays’ Molly Rankin predicted that Moon King are “destined to explode”. Maybe they will; maybe they won’t. But I suspect they will have an impact on a lot of music lovers if they get the chance.
SECRET LIFE will be released on Last Gang Records in the UK on 13 April and worldwide on 14 April.
Review: Ian Gelling
Photographs: Julia Hendrickson