Review Summary: Lap it up, lap it up.
I don't quite know what to think.
And the Moon Was Hungry is incomparable, unrecognisable and utterly, stark-raving mad to the nth degree. I don't know why this surprises me, during their live performances the band would dress up in full Victorian-era gear before weaving music from violins, electric guitar, piano and one of the sweetest female singers ever to have swanned their way into these humble eardrums. Disarmingly sweet that is, the lyrical focus swings rapidly from hints at reality to pure fantasy, while ever retaining a disturbing and off-putting tone with references to cannibalism and pure, primal anger. The shear
passion put into the vocals by Morgan is disarming, allowing the music to drip into your brain, sharp as a knife. It's moving though, funnily enough... these nightmare-ish images thinly veil the wreck of a woman hiding beneath them. It's not until she crones "oh... no one invited me" in the closing track that we fully realise this, and as a result everything takes on a new meaning and offers itself to us, ripe for interpretation.
The vocals are the focus of course, the origins of the LP stem from a solo project by the singer, but it's the instrumentalism that really completes
and the Moon Was Hungry. It lays its camp in classical, but makes tentative steps into metal, folk and cabaret, makes use vocal samples and even then finds the time to strip down to just a metronome at one point. It's incredibly experimental and just as mad as the vocals when it needs to be, equally managing to combine beauty with an offbeat, surprising uncertainty.
And the Moon Was Hungry certainly isn't the easiest thing to describe to someone seeing as there is not much to compare it to, but it's criminally overlooked and close enough to flawless for me to dare bring that word into this review.
