I’ve been fairly eagerly awaiting this album ever since reviewing Cedermark’s contribution to a split cassette released earlier this year.  I was charmed by the fierce chaos he seemed to court with his recording, with the whole structure of the songs seemingly forever on the verge of stumbling and falling to pieces.

This, to its slight detriment I suppose, isn’t quite as rickety a contraption.  The previous recordings felt like an old horse buggy driving far too fast, where the slightest wonky cobblestone might sense the whole thing cartwheeling.  This, on the other hand, feels far more like a conventional guitar album.  That guitar is buried under effects and squealing like a little piggy for the majority of the album, but still lacks the wildness I felt on the previous stuff.

That sounds like, and I suppose is, a moan, but it doesn’t mean I am not really enjoying the album.  There’s a rattling percussion on Moon Deluxe which reminds me of the Dodos a little, as does the deep strum on the acoustic guitar, on the songs where it is prominent.

The pace of the album is generally more slow and foreboding than frantic and aggressive, and this works really well, as if it’s waiting to explode.  That atmosphere is great, but there are certainly times I wish it would deliver what it threatens; that it would burst free of its restraints and deliver a truly fearsome, face-melting punch to the eardrums.

At times it can sound like Interpol meet Lift to Experience, but that is a pretty lofty comparison and I am not sure I would really want to go quite that far. And as a comparison where it fails to hit the mark is that Lift to Experience bring a kind of Biblical exuberance to their music that this lacks a little.

The drums get a healthy workout here and there and the guitar really does growl from time to time, but in general I wish the songs on Moon Deluxe had a little of the feral menace of their predecessors.  It’s a good album, and the ever-present swirl of feedback, like mist twisting round your ankles, gives it a cracking sense of perpetual, low-level menace, but while I am always nervous I am never terrified.

Andrew Cedermark – Gloria ’85

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Andrew Cedermark – Untruth

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