“June: This month, Nathan was mostly looking up at the moon.”
“June: This month, Nathan was mostly looking up at the moon.”
Nathan Moomaw was about to turn 26 when, suffering some kind of mid-life-Christ-I’m-bored-and-need-to-keep-myself-occupied crisis he decided to set himself a little task, kind of like a New Year’s Resolution, only his birthday is in April, so it was more like a year long April Fools joke. He wrote himself a little brief : Write and record a song a month for each of the 12 months of his 26th year. Style didn’t matter, just so long as the song’s were entirely written and recorded in the time frame of that specific month. This is the type of brief that most art students, and indeed musicians, should set themselves on a regular basis, although, the thought of sitting down and listening to a homework assignment doesn’t exactly fill you with excitement, does it? It must be said, however, this album comes nicely packaged, so it must be worth a listen, right?
Anyway, here’s how the year panned out for him:
April: He wanted to be a bird. Or a fish, apparently.
May: Spent some time thinking about God and ice cream trucks in New York. Which is nice.
June: This month, Nathan was mostly looking up at the moon.
July: Looks like he had a pretty uneventful, but enjoyable month, as this is a song simply about wandering through life wanting for nothing.
August: Woman has gone. “Wind-up War-men” keep reminding him of it. Bastards. Now he’s leaving. Waiting for the ‘Reaper’s train.” Oh dear, this isn’t going to end well. Let’s move on shall we?
September: A bit of wishful thinking here – “If you were a lover, you’d be mine” – although it all ends with a bit of a nap, which is nice.
October: Nathan doesn’t care what state the world is in, so long as he’s got you. Whoever you are.
November: Nathan isn’t going anywhere, whether he makes money or not.
December: Nathan returns home and starts to feel like he’s a talentless schmuck. He wrote a song about it though, so hopefully that should perk him up a bit.
January: Nathan and his special one are moving again. He wants to crack walnuts with his hands. He’s definitely feeling better now.
February: Nathan would like you all to know that he has come through his little dark spell and is now feeling on top form. “Mark my words, I’m gonna blaze again.” Just watch him go now.
March: Nathan spent the last month of his 26th year talking to a bird and people watching, which is better than being depressed, I think.
26 is a beautifully strange piece of work because, although I’m sure the initial concept was put together simply as a means of getting him to do some work instead of sitting around on his arse all day, in the end I think it’s had a much bigger impact on the work itself. It seems like he found it easier to write as he went along as the songs get deeper and more complex as the album wears on. I’m sure the album is a lot more personal than he had perhaps intended but that’s to be commended as, even when he’s obviously feeling insecure and questioning his own ability, he still comes up with something that’s intruiging to listen to. All in all, 26 deserves a great deal of praise because it has turned out to be a damn sight better than you may initially give it credit for and for that reason alone is well worth checking out.
I can’t wait to hear what he does next year.
Words: Damian Leslie