Artist: Moon Mother
Title: Meadowlands
Type: Album
Label: Self Released
Something a little different today, which is always good, and this came to me via an email contact rather than my usual routes. I get a few contacts these days; some completely off the mark for the blog and my (fairly broad) tastes, some spot on, but others like Moon Mother raise a slightly quizzical but intrigued eyebrow with me but at the moment I can give most things a listen, just to see.
And Moon Mother turned into a lovely “Well, I wouldn’t have found it if they hadn’t contacted me, so that’s a big win…” kind of moment.
Moon Mother are a Swedish duo, Sara Mehner and Patreic Ahlstrom whom, I guess, kind of haunt the world of dark folk and doomy, ethereal rock. I gather this is there second album. See, I really am new to them….
The images of the album were very dark and considered, a little eerie, a touch witchy so I hit the play and ‘High House’ very much set the scene. Sara’s voice from the off is simply beautiful; tone and clarity are perfect with a wistful emotion wandering through it that focusses and hardens as the music rises from acoustic guitar to the slow and soft rock of the drums and electric guitar. It has that sound of ghosts waltzing through an empty house, captive and capitavting with the gentle sway of the music. It is beautifully recorded too; rich and deep in sound and with an arrangement that blossoms out to fill the room.
‘It Comes With Shadows’ most definitely follows in similar dusty steps, a little more of the folk veil layered over the top. Its when Sara’s voice reaches up and out that this music takes you. Soft as silk and yet with the ability to open you up like the sharpest of scalpels. It is so hard to look away at these moments. So hard.
‘World In A Glass Jar’ has a mournful fragility. I think of touchstones like The Devil’s Trade here. That strange, half light world where folk meets the darkest of subjects and a the beauty of the music leads you through a graveyard of memories and a twilight of being. The movement between soft vocals and acoustic guitars or piano to the swell of electric guitar and drums and the emotion pushing the voice is simply breathtaking.
It is a strange world that this album occupies. The lyrics are dense, meaning woven through poetic allusion and conjured striking visuals through words. ‘Be A Forest, Child!’ is a perfect moment of this, the almost Americana to the folk summoning ghosts from the sixties singer songwriter worlds through a dark mirror of modernity. It is a world of the ebb and flow of dark clouds and moonlight, of silk and bitter earth and a strange strenght not to accept what the world has shovelled over your body.
This is also one of those albums where against my nature I am compelled not to break down this glorious painting track by track. It is one of those where you will have so much more with what you discover for yourself rather than continually pointing out this stroke of that.
I will however be remiss if I did not mention my favourite song here, the closer ‘Windhover’. Even with what had come before the simple opening of the voice on this sunk stealthy claws deep into me. Echoes of Enya of all artists initially, but with the crows come that strange misty early hours light in a bleak but beautiful landscape. And I believe in something….something that is good sung in the most heartbreaking of tones, emotion upon the sleeve, the minimal music. Folk, country, gothic shadows.. This time you you’ll move bravely with confidence, the gold you hold….This is the kind of song that may bring your eyes that ache with moisture just on their edge but it will offer a hand too, a hope. A little more strength perhaps. And the eerie calling vocals here just break me. The sound of the kestrel?
Oh Windhover, will you lend me your wings….
This is an album for those times when you need quiet to reach inside yourself and find the flickering light of hope once more or to sink back into the warmth of your home and simply let your emotions take the journey with Moon Mother, to see the world through their eyes.
In a world of turbulence you may even find a haven here.
I love this, I truly do.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 