Tag: Chicago shoegaze bands

Moontype take the “Ferry” on their first single.

Photo by Julia Dratel

Laying down roots at Oberlin College before officially becoming a band in Chicago last year, it has not take Moontype long to start turning heads. Despite having no music online, the three piece (composed of singer/bassist Margaret McCarthy, guitarist Ben Cruz and drummer Emerson Hunton) began playing in their adoptive city in 2019 with only a pair of Bandcamp demos to their name and quickly started appearing on bills with buzzing acts like Strange Ranger, Horsejumper of Love and Paear. This led to them capturing the attention of the rising Chicago label Born Yesterday (helmed by Deeper‘s Kevin Fairbairn and the increasingly ubiquitous engineer Greg Obis), who have recently garnered an expanding national profile with releases from DIY circuit up and comers Landowner and Cafe Racer. Today, Moontype are announcing their signing to the label with their single “Ferry” which is premiering via The FADER. 


WATCH: Moontype’s “Ferry” video on YouTube // FADER


 The track, described by FADER as “a gauzy Midwest fantasy,” is an arresting example of Moontype’s sound, one that is startlingly fully-realized for a band who have yet to release their first album, and of a songwriter in McCarthy with a rare ability to communicate her perspective with a relatable clarity and a transporting depth. There are suggestions of the intimate songwriterly-ness of Tomberlin or Lomelda, blended with the sweeping, technically-minded indie of Built To Spill, and even hints of the downbeat grandeur of Mazzy Star in a track that sees McCarthy relate the alienating feeling of a gradually dissipating friendship. Immediately engaging and emotionally acute, it’s the kind of sure-handed first offering that provides a tantalizing suggestion of what’s to come from an extremely promising new band. 

“‘Ferry’ is a song about the loss of friendship, not when it breaks apart quickly and devastatingly but when it slowly unravels and you watch it go,” McCarthy explains to FADER. “3 or 4 of my friendships made their way into this song. I think about a friend who was about to go on a two-year long tour, and I started to drift away from him months before he actually left – a trick the mind plays to make the break less painful. Your friend leaves and afterwards you’re left with these visceral memories – running around the city at night, drinking whiskey in the alley – and in memory form those experiences gain potency, like ‘ah that was really living, and what I have now is nothing.’ And that vivid memory stands in high contrast to the way their entire personhood is slowly fading from your mind, you forget how they walk, what kind of jokes they made. And then you’re left with only yourself and you realize that you’ve defined yourself through the relationships you’ve been in, and when those people go away you feel like an empty shell (no snail inside!) and that feeling is enough to make a person say ‘I wanna take the ferry to Michigan! Get me out of this place!’”


“Ferry” is available to purchase on Bandcamp.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Tom at Hive Mind PR.]

Review: Hum – Inlet

Everyone knows that 2020 has been a crappy year, but there have been some pleanst surprises this year: Drive-ins made a spectacular comeback, pets adoptions skyrocketed, Dungeons and Dragons became more popular than it has been since the early 1990s, Crayola released crayons with colors that better reflect all the different skin tones in the world, people saved money, read books, and learned how to cook again.

Also, Hum released a new album – Inlet.

For those of you unaware, Hum are a heavy shoegaze / space rock band who released four albums between 1991 and 1998. Their single, “Stars,” from the 1995 album You’d Prefer an Astronaut, was a mainstay of MTV and modern rock radio at the time. They were one of those bands that everyone found intriguing, but who somewhat disappeared after poor sales of their 1998 album, Downward Is Heavenward, and their touring van getting wrecked in 2000. There were occasional reunion shows now and then, but they were few and far between. Then, Inlet was released on June 23, 2020 and floored everyone.

It quickly proved that Hum hadn’t lost any of their power. Opener “Waves” unleashes a wall of sound in the first thirty seconds as lead singer / rhythm guitarist Matt Talbott (whose voice seems to have not aged a day) sings about the power of nature and drummer Bryan St. Pere sounds like he’s beating his snare drum through the floor. The loud, heavy, yet clear sound bassist Jeff Dimpsey gets on “In the Den” is a thing of wonder. It carries the track while Tablott and lead guitarist Tim Lash unleash electric guitar chugging like two growling tugboats pulling a barge loaded with UFO parts.

Dimpsey’s bass somehow gets heavier on “Desert Rambler” – which is over nine minutes of fuzzy, shimmering space rock. “Where is the bottom? I wouldn’t know,” Talbott sings. This seems to be about depression and heartbreak, but it could also be about whatever’s inside a cosmic wormhole. The song reminds me of alien landscapes drawn by Moebius.

“Step into You” is the shortest song on the album at just over four minutes in length, but it’s no less fuzzy. The lads in Hum have this amazing ability to create a sense of gravity being in flux around you with their sound. It’s difficult to describe, but it almost becomes tactile when you hear it. “The Summoning” ups the buzz-saw guitars so they sound like a swarm of super-intelligent bees.

It seems appropriate that they have a song called “Cloud City” on the album since many of the tracks seem to lift you into the upper atmosphere and beyond. “I don’t feel anything,” Talbott sings, perhaps because he’s weightless by this point from the sheer power of he and the rest of Hum are generating to get to escape velocity.

“I want to stay next to you. I don’t remember your name. Do you feel the tremors here?” Talbott asks on “Folding” – a soaring song about love and knowing when to let go of it when it’s gone. The song melts into a psychedelic whale song-like drone for over a minute at the end. Lash really gets to strut his stuff (as if he hasn’t been throughout the entire record) on the closer, “Shapeshifter,” which has him flying like an eagle over a barren desert one moment and then roaring across that same desert in an experimental rocket car the next.

It’s a stunning record and a welcome return from Hum. It’s a wonderful escape from the chaos of 2020. Put on your headphones, sit in a place where you can watch nature, and let it do the rest.

Keep your mind open.

[I’d hum a happy tune if you subscribed.]