…what The Soft Moon do really, really well is build up a very accessible, Drury Lane sense of drama and cod-personality.
…what The Soft Moon do really, really well is build up a very accessible, Drury Lane sense of drama and cod-personality.
(Captured Tracks) http://www.konkurrent.nl
So The Soft Moon called their new LP Deeper. I’ll give them that. I’d say it’s deeper. Deeper as in more pressurised. Deeper in the sense of being down a mineshaft with the weight of the earth above you. The splendid opening two tracks, Inward and Black feel like they will (if you will allow me to use my tunnelling analogy a little bit longer) suddenly implode, and smother you in the process.
Ach, I can’t get too portentious here; I’ll leave the band to do that. And it’s a fine record if you’re in the mood for feeling like you’re 14 and the whole world hates you, especially as the latest cluster of pustules on your forehead resemble the face of Katie Hopkins. We get existential despair and plodding gated drum sounds on Wasting and Try (which could be off Garlands), and programmed electro squirts on Wrong and Feel, or grand piano stabs and reedy synths on the marvellous Without. It’s a predictable mix of C20th and C21st Goff, with nods to the usual suspects and the current horde of touch screen dark allies.
But what The Soft Moon do really, really well is build up a very accessible, Drury Lane sense of drama and cod-personality. Yes the soliloquies in the songs may sound like they’re being expresed by a papier-mâché Aunt Sallies but – just in the theatre they give you something to aim at, or project onto. You suspect that the tracks on Deeper want to be the aural equivalent of spraying a slogan on the wall nearest you. It’s DRAMA innit Guv. So, Deeper (and especially the excellent title track) is ever so slightly preposterous and thespian, but somehow you really love its pluck and directness. It’s very serious too, the way that Sisters of Mercy were serious, Jacobean and preening, flirting with memento mori and notions of life lived in the shadows and stuff.
Regardless, most of all the songs are boss; well constructed and built for repeated use. You really should give it a spin.