Moon Attendant – One Last Summer

Big Potato (Europe) / Graveface (North America)

There is a sense of joy to the cheesy fairground keyboards that open up Moon Attendant‘s debut album One Last Summer. The gentle drums and sleepy vocal delivery full of secrets give this first track a sense of a bedsit Squeeze, with a window overlooking the Brighton seafront and a view of the spring tides through lace-curtained windows.

That warm charm is continued into the Stereolab-like groove of “Hot Power”, but its similarity is fleeting as the switchback of ideas that the band has derails the track into a delicious breakdown that ushers in changes of key and a sudden sweep of stomping summer fun. There is no second guessing here as the band leads you gasping down back alleys and snickets with descending chords and plenty of space for company. The space is there for you to inject your own daydreams as the track squiggles into a long drawn-out instrumental saga with a surprising build in intensity.

It is a lot to jam into the first two tracks, so the acoustic ballad “R.H.S.” with its sleepy, untamed voice is quite a palate cleanser. The rambly backing voices sound as though everyone has just awoken and they are sitting with the sun streaming into their misty eyes. It is a feeling that continues into “Catch A Train” and its hopeless romanticism reminds me very much of Nic Dalton‘s Godstar; the idea of a group of friends sat around a cheap kitchen table, mugs of tea and Sunday smiles, open to all slightly ramshackle music thoughts. Smeared electronics and repetition haunt the spacey whirl of “Hammers”, while “Castles Burning” is a rabbit-hole whirlpool of sounds and textures.

They like to throw a little bit if everything into the songs that carve them their own cosy little niche. There is a quirkiness that meets up nicely with the acoustic psychedelia on “Sleepy Sleep” and an open-mindedness and willingness to allow the song to drift if that is what is needed. They are “making potions in the front room” on the bare-bones “Lucky Escape” with its spooky keyboard tones, but then there is another volte face as it transforms with distorted guitar and the chirp of a Doors-y organ. All that rolls into the spacey wig-out lullaby of “I Would Like To Teach You” and then the album rounds out with the ’60s puppet spy theme of “Don’t Step Back”, which regales us with trashy drums and high-speed uproar before descending into silence.

This is a really charming album that tries to lose the listener at every turn but always with a wry, sun-warmed smile. One Last Summer is a lovely thing.

-Mr Olivetti-