| The Moondoggies |
| A Love Sleeps Deep |
The Moondoggies — A Love Sleeps Deep (April 13, 2018) 
→→ The new album from The Moondoggies, A Love Sleeps Deep, is now at Hardly Art. The first pressing is on colored vinyl, while your order will include a digital download (cassette does not include download). Here’s Hardly Art on the band and new record:
→→ A Love Sleeps Deep’s bones rattle with all the seismic changes of the last five years since the release of The Moondoggies’ Adios I’m a Ghost. While the Washington band got lumped in early on with the woodsy folk~rock/Americana movement that sprung up in the Pacific Northwest in the 2000s, the core Moondoggies sound has always been rock in the more classical sense≈more Pink Floyd than Woody Guthrie. A Love Sleeps Deep crystalizes that.
Location: Seattle, WA
Album release: April 13, 2018
Record Label: Hardly Art
Duration: 44:07
Tracks:
1 Easy Coming 6:16
2 Cinders 5:13
3 Match 4:05
4 Sick in Bed 5:43
5 Soviet Barn Fire 4:41
6 My Mother 4:16
7 Promises 5:19
8 Underground (A Love Sleeps Deep) 8:35
℗ 2018 Hardly Art
Description:
→→ A Love Sleeps Deep’s bones rattle with all the seismic changes of the last five years since the release of The Moondoggies’ Adios I’m a Ghost. While the Washington band got lumped in early on with the woodsy folk~rock/Americana movement that sprung up in the Pacific North~west in the 2000s, the core Moondoggies sound has always been rock in the more classical sense~more groove~based than Woody Guthrie. A Love Sleeps Deep crystalizes that.
→→ Produced by Erik Blood (Shabazz Palaces, Tacocat). The Moondoggies will hit the road in support of A Love Sleeps Deep in mid~April (see below for a full list of dates).
→→ Recorded in Seattle in the spring of 2017 , A Love Sleeps Deep is also an album of collaboration. The band seemingly threw each tune up in the air to see how it bounced around the room, making sure everyone got their hands on it. From around 30 initial demos, Blood helped select the most jam~heavy numbers. “They had that vibe that made me love the band in the first place, but with a weathered distinction and confidence that moved me,” says Blood.
Review
By Bill Golembeski. 02 April 2018 / Rating: 9
→→ On first listen, this one is organic American guitar rock with a deep and subtle beauty. “Easy Going” will certainly appeal to anyone who loves Neil Young and Crazy Horse and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.
→→ But Caleb Quick’s keyboards linger in the shallows of the tune and soften the tension of the urgent duel guitar work.
→→ And then the song turns on a dime and echoes (no pun) the spacey blues of Pink Floyd.
→→ “Cinders” has an incessant groove, again not dissimilar from the best of Crazy Horse. Once more, the guitar playing reveals its sublime textures after repeated plays. And again, the keyboards frame that beauty. This is an album of understatement. Even the lyrics, buried deep in the sonics, are worthy of patience as songwriter and vocalist Kevin Murphy sings against racism and the “voices in the darkness.”
→→ I don’t know, but American music in the year 2018 just needs to say that.
→→ “Match” is dreamy rock music. It recalls the absolute beauty of the sadly neglected Fleetwood Mac album Future Games. Yeah, they sold a lot of records later on, but this mid~period record is a lovely (and perfect) juxtaposition of Danny Kirwan’s British blues and Bob Welch’s west coast guitar sound.
→→ The same is true for my favorite guitar band, Wishbone Ash. But again, the sound of Brit hard rock and folk music bumps into American blues and jazz.
→→ And speaking of bumping, Carl Sagan, in his book Cosmos, writes, “Sex seems to have been invented around two billion years ago.” Apparently, (to paraphrase his book) that’s when two microbes accidentally bumped into each other and managed to “exchange whole paragraphs, pages and books of their DNA.”
→→ Now, given the fact that this accidental bumping of two microbes, sped the pace of evolution, an evolution that somehow and eventually resulted in Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, The Beatles, The Kinks, and, ironically the band Devo, those two microbes, perhaps, and it’s only an idea, should be posthumously inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, just to say thanks.
→→ But that’s the deal with these Moondoggies and their American music. They take so many bits of rock ‘n’ roll, and seamlessly bump them into each other, and in doing so, create something expansive, something rather deep, something diverse, and perhaps, something quite profound.
→→ And American music in the year 2018 just needs to say that, too.
→→ The next song, “Sick in Bed” is 50’s rock, resuscitated, like a pleasant dream of sharing a really good hamburger with the love of a lifetime.
→→ But then Crazy Horse grunge rock rears its head again with the wonderful “Soviet Barn Fire.” This one shreds its tune. Somewhere there’s a pause. But then the guitars shred the tune again. Then “My Mother” cascades like water and adds a pedal steel guitar into the whirlpool. And “Promises” strolls like the perfect prom night date when no photo can ever capture the big moon moment. That’s America, yet again.
→→ Ah, the final song, “Underground A Love Sleeps Deep,” just sings for itself. This one is epic; it’s epic in the jangly guitars; it’s epic in its concern for the future; it’s epic in the deep bass; and it’s epic in the tense guitar and all the voices that slowly sing, choir~like, into the final grooves.
→→ This is Americana rock music. It’s subtle; it’s commonly profound; it’s a flannel shirted record; it’s a buffalo nickel album; it’s an album where we look to England; and it’s an album where our mother country glances back at us. It’s a record in which we look at ourselves. And that, even when contemplating the worth of a rock ‘n’ roll album, is always a pretty good thing. →→ https://soundblab.com/
About
→→ Rooted in folk~rock and woodsy Americana, the Moondoggies take influences from such vocally inclined groups as the Byrds, the Band, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Although hailing from Seattle, seeds for the band’s formation were planted in nearby Everett, Washington, where Kevin Murphy (vocals, guitar), Robert Terreberry (bass), Carl Dahlen (drums), and Caleb Quick (keyboards) formed a teenaged band while attending Cascade High School. The students discovered their talent for three~part vocal harmonies, and when Murphy returned from a summer~long stay in Alaska in 2005, the four friends reconvened in Seattle to form the Moondoggies. Taking up residence at a local dive bar named the Blue Moon Tavern, the Moondoggies honed their craft and soon netted a contract with Hardly Art, an imprint of Seattle’s own Sub Pop Records. Don’t Be a Stranger, the band’s woozy debut, appeared in 2008, with the mature Tidelands following in October 2010. Third album “Adios I’m a Ghost”, released in 2013 and aided by the addition of multi~instrumentalist Jon Pontrello to the band, fell somewhere between the two in sound and tone. The band spent plenty of time touring behind the record, sharing stages with the likes of Blitzen Trapper, Dawes, and the Head and the Heart. Jon Pontrello added pedal steel guitar to his arsenal of instruments in time for the recording of the fourth Moondoggies album, 2018’s A Love Sleeps Deep. ~ Andrew Leahey
Bandcamp: https://themoondoggies.bandcamp.com/album/a-love-sleeps-deep
→→→→→→→→___________________________________→→→→→→→→
| The Moondoggies |
| A Love Sleeps Deep |
→→ A Love Sleeps Deep’s bones rattle with all the seismic changes of the last five years since the release of The Moondoggies’ Adios I’m a Ghost. While the Washington band got lumped in early on with the woodsy folk~rock/Americana movement that sprung up in the Pacific Northwest in the 2000s, the core Moondoggies sound has always been rock in the more classical sense≈more Pink Floyd than Woody Guthrie. A Love Sleeps Deep crystalizes that.
Album release: April 13, 2018
Record Label: Hardly Art
Duration: 44:07
Tracks:
1 Easy Coming 6:16
2 Cinders 5:13
3 Match 4:05
4 Sick in Bed 5:43
5 Soviet Barn Fire 4:41
6 My Mother 4:16
7 Promises 5:19
8 Underground (A Love Sleeps Deep) 8:35
℗ 2018 Hardly Art
Description:
→→ A Love Sleeps Deep’s bones rattle with all the seismic changes of the last five years since the release of The Moondoggies’ Adios I’m a Ghost. While the Washington band got lumped in early on with the woodsy folk~rock/Americana movement that sprung up in the Pacific North~west in the 2000s, the core Moondoggies sound has always been rock in the more classical sense~more groove~based than Woody Guthrie. A Love Sleeps Deep crystalizes that.
→→ Produced by Erik Blood (Shabazz Palaces, Tacocat). The Moondoggies will hit the road in support of A Love Sleeps Deep in mid~April (see below for a full list of dates).
→→ Recorded in Seattle in the spring of 2017 , A Love Sleeps Deep is also an album of collaboration. The band seemingly threw each tune up in the air to see how it bounced around the room, making sure everyone got their hands on it. From around 30 initial demos, Blood helped select the most jam~heavy numbers. “They had that vibe that made me love the band in the first place, but with a weathered distinction and confidence that moved me,” says Blood.
Review
By Bill Golembeski. 02 April 2018 / Rating: 9
→→ On first listen, this one is organic American guitar rock with a deep and subtle beauty. “Easy Going” will certainly appeal to anyone who loves Neil Young and Crazy Horse and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.
→→ But Caleb Quick’s keyboards linger in the shallows of the tune and soften the tension of the urgent duel guitar work.
→→ And then the song turns on a dime and echoes (no pun) the spacey blues of Pink Floyd.
→→ “Cinders” has an incessant groove, again not dissimilar from the best of Crazy Horse. Once more, the guitar playing reveals its sublime textures after repeated plays. And again, the keyboards frame that beauty. This is an album of understatement. Even the lyrics, buried deep in the sonics, are worthy of patience as songwriter and vocalist Kevin Murphy sings against racism and the “voices in the darkness.”
→→ I don’t know, but American music in the year 2018 just needs to say that.
→→ “Match” is dreamy rock music. It recalls the absolute beauty of the sadly neglected Fleetwood Mac album Future Games. Yeah, they sold a lot of records later on, but this mid~period record is a lovely (and perfect) juxtaposition of Danny Kirwan’s British blues and Bob Welch’s west coast guitar sound.
→→ The same is true for my favorite guitar band, Wishbone Ash. But again, the sound of Brit hard rock and folk music bumps into American blues and jazz.
→→ And speaking of bumping, Carl Sagan, in his book Cosmos, writes, “Sex seems to have been invented around two billion years ago.” Apparently, (to paraphrase his book) that’s when two microbes accidentally bumped into each other and managed to “exchange whole paragraphs, pages and books of their DNA.”
→→ Now, given the fact that this accidental bumping of two microbes, sped the pace of evolution, an evolution that somehow and eventually resulted in Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, The Beatles, The Kinks, and, ironically the band Devo, those two microbes, perhaps, and it’s only an idea, should be posthumously inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, just to say thanks.
→→ But that’s the deal with these Moondoggies and their American music. They take so many bits of rock ‘n’ roll, and seamlessly bump them into each other, and in doing so, create something expansive, something rather deep, something diverse, and perhaps, something quite profound.
→→ And American music in the year 2018 just needs to say that, too.
→→ The next song, “Sick in Bed” is 50’s rock, resuscitated, like a pleasant dream of sharing a really good hamburger with the love of a lifetime.
→→ But then Crazy Horse grunge rock rears its head again with the wonderful “Soviet Barn Fire.” This one shreds its tune. Somewhere there’s a pause. But then the guitars shred the tune again. Then “My Mother” cascades like water and adds a pedal steel guitar into the whirlpool. And “Promises” strolls like the perfect prom night date when no photo can ever capture the big moon moment. That’s America, yet again.
→→ Ah, the final song, “Underground A Love Sleeps Deep,” just sings for itself. This one is epic; it’s epic in the jangly guitars; it’s epic in its concern for the future; it’s epic in the deep bass; and it’s epic in the tense guitar and all the voices that slowly sing, choir~like, into the final grooves.
→→ This is Americana rock music. It’s subtle; it’s commonly profound; it’s a flannel shirted record; it’s a buffalo nickel album; it’s an album where we look to England; and it’s an album where our mother country glances back at us. It’s a record in which we look at ourselves. And that, even when contemplating the worth of a rock ‘n’ roll album, is always a pretty good thing. →→ https://soundblab.com/
About
→→ Rooted in folk~rock and woodsy Americana, the Moondoggies take influences from such vocally inclined groups as the Byrds, the Band, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Although hailing from Seattle, seeds for the band’s formation were planted in nearby Everett, Washington, where Kevin Murphy (vocals, guitar), Robert Terreberry (bass), Carl Dahlen (drums), and Caleb Quick (keyboards) formed a teenaged band while attending Cascade High School. The students discovered their talent for three~part vocal harmonies, and when Murphy returned from a summer~long stay in Alaska in 2005, the four friends reconvened in Seattle to form the Moondoggies. Taking up residence at a local dive bar named the Blue Moon Tavern, the Moondoggies honed their craft and soon netted a contract with Hardly Art, an imprint of Seattle’s own Sub Pop Records. Don’t Be a Stranger, the band’s woozy debut, appeared in 2008, with the mature Tidelands following in October 2010. Third album “Adios I’m a Ghost”, released in 2013 and aided by the addition of multi~instrumentalist Jon Pontrello to the band, fell somewhere between the two in sound and tone. The band spent plenty of time touring behind the record, sharing stages with the likes of Blitzen Trapper, Dawes, and the Head and the Heart. Jon Pontrello added pedal steel guitar to his arsenal of instruments in time for the recording of the fourth Moondoggies album, 2018’s A Love Sleeps Deep. ~ Andrew Leahey
Bandcamp: https://themoondoggies.bandcamp.com/album/a-love-sleeps-deep
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