Review Summary: “Yo dawg, you’re running in the wrong direction”
Some bands arrive remarkably fully formed on their début album; think Rage Against the Machine, Guns ‘n’ Roses or the Sex Pistols. Within one song you understood the band’s aesthetic, style and intentions; you also knew straight off the bat whether you were going to be part of their audience. This could be considered the perfect sales pitch for a music artist but sometimes a far more muddled opening gambit can be just as entertaining and successful. Half Moon Run formed after lead vocalist Devon Portielje answered an ad in Craigslist and boy did their début ‘Dark Eyes’ sound like it; their scatter-gun approach to musical influences took in folk, soul, rock, pop and indie while also leaving a little space for some more experimental touches. They sounded exactly like a fledgling band of near strangers, trying on different musical garb to see what fitted them most comfortably.
Surprisingly the album held together pretty well thanks to consistent song writing and some top quality vocal arrangements; the key going forward on their second release was surely to hone what worked best on ‘Dark Eyes’ and develop a settled identity for the band. In these circumstances the biggest pitfall would of course be selecting the least exciting musical direction of those you’ve established and then accentuating all the most regrettable habits from the début. Ladies and gentlefolk I present to you ‘Sun Leads Me On’, a tepid mix of sub-Fleet Foxes folksy harmonising and faux down-home Mumford authenticity.
The watchwords here are 'bland' and 'inoffensive'; the opening two songs in particular are so polite and drearily tasteful they border on apologetic. To compound matters the vocals on this release take an unexpected dive; the leads on the chorus to ‘Consider Yourself’ are ‘junk trapped in the zipper’ painful while the choice of backing vocal arrangements are generally uninspired but reach an unpalatable nadir on the cheese-ridden ‘Hands in the Garden’. Remarkably two songs manage to lift themselves free of this bog of eternal beige; ‘Narrow Margins’ is built around undeniably pretty vocals and adds textures reminiscent of ‘In Rainbows’ period Radiohead to the mix; meanwhile ‘The Debt’ takes the same Radiohead influence but this time layers in some creaky Sparklehorse sound effects and a twinkly Band of Horses-alike verse. These modest successes show just how far a dash of experimentation goes.
The direction Half Moon Run have chosen here could well prove fruitful, there’s certainly a ready-made audience for this sound, but you can’t help but feel that in the desperate gamble to land a distinct personality of their own the band placed all their chips on the most obvious safe bet; as a result the stakes of this game have been significantly lowered and now Mr Mildly Schizo has been unceremoniously usurped by Mr Wholesomely Agreeable. I for one preferred the other guy.
