-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Ambient * Ethereal *
Artist..: Martin Courtney
Album...: Many Moons
GENRE....: Indie
STYLE....: Indie Rock, Folk Rock
LABEL....: Domino SCENE.....: 2016-01-04
BITRATE..: 258 kbps avg STORE.....: 2015-00-00
ENCODER..: LAME 3.98.4 -V0 TRACKS....: 10
SIZE.....: 69.28MB SOURCE....: CD
URL..: http://martincourtneyiv.com/
- TRACKLIST
1 Awake 4:02
2 Foto 4:31
3 Vestiges 4:58
4 Before We Begin 3:50
5 Northern Highway 4:01
6 Many Moons 2:36
7 Asleep 2:43
8 Little Blue 3:24
9 Focus 3:17
10 Airport Bar 3:56
Total Playtime: 37:18
Following closely on the heels of Real Estate bandmates Matt Mondanile
(Ducktails) and Alex Bleeker (Alex Bleeker & the Freaks), bandleader Martin
Courtney steps forward with his own 2015 "side project," his first solo
album. Not straying far from Real Estate's Atlas issued a year prior, Many
Moons is a mellow, psychedelic pop-flavored excursion through jangly guitars
and mellifluous reflection. Far from a one-man effort, it features assistance
from, among others, Real Estate keyboardist Matt Kallman, drummer Michael
Stasiak of like-minded EZTV, and bassist (and EZTV/Ducktails/Alex
Bleeker/Real Estate collaborator) Jarvis Taveniere, who produced the album.
He brings a sharp, crisp sound to the fat, melodic guitar tones evoking the
Beatles and Big Star, pensive vocals, and unshakably dreamy, nostalgic
quality of Many Moons. Speaking of dreamy, the record includes the trippy,
still sweet-sounding "Asleep," which features guitar, organ, and vocals by
lo-fi artist Julian Lynch in tandem with Courtney. Like much of the album,
the song struggles to feel the peace of its own swathing, dulcet tones:
"Rapid eye/It's so weird to be alive/At the helm and overwhelmed." The album
itself never gets contented, either. The surprising and utterly endearing
title track, for instance, is a strings-enforced guitar instrumental
featuring solo flute on a melody that sounds straight out of 1967 San
Francisco -- hard to believe but harder to resist. Other highlights include
the harmony- and chord-rich "Vestiges" and mid-career Beatles-haunted
"Northern Highway." The album is also notably peppered with sheerly beautiful
guitar solos. All told, Many Moons is not only worthwhile for fans of Real
Estate and related projects, but for lovers of the honeyed melodies and
genial jangle of the pleasantest of power pop.
*
Leave it to Martin Courtney to turn a solo album into a gesture of
self-effacement. The singer/guitarist's New Jersey band Real Estate have
spent the last six years elevating effortless indie pop into a deeply moving
art form, and his fellow group members have routinely worked in side
projectsùbassist Alex Bleeker with his woolly'n'rootsy Freaks outfit, and
guitarist Matt Mondanile with the watery dreamscapes of Ducktails. But
Courtney's debut solo outing arrives with his own name pushed to the fore.
And yet, Many Moons is hardly the work of a narcissistic singer/songwriter.
("I just couldn't come up with a band name," he recently shrugged.) Instead,
the charmingly low-key album is an act of humility and, beyond that, quiet
grace.
Courtney's voice, like his name, is front and center here, markedly stripped
of Real Estate's signature reverb. And rather than relying on his familiar
turn-of-the-millennium indie rock touchstones, the singer inhabits winsome,
lightly orchestrated '60s psych pop and '70s power pop (documented in a
nicely complementary playlist). The album gains shape thanks to an enviably
accomplished band that includes Real Estate keyboardist Matt Kallman,
like-minded Jerseyite Julian Lynch, and Woods' Jarvis Taveniere, who
produced. Plus, for a set that casually began as a stress-relief outlet ahead
of Real Estate's 2014 album Atlas, Many Moons works as a remarkably cohesive
album, meandering its way across themes of past and present to a state of
aching clarity that's modest, but no less genuine for it. Once heard
quasi-chanting about suburban suds, Courtney is now the lawnchair-Zen dad.
The albumÆs title phrase occurs first amid a hodgepodge of images on the
lushly jangling "Vestiges": "Many moons for it to grow/ Phases they will come
and they will go." These are the musings of an artist often associated with
nostalgia accepting the truism that what we really have left from yesterday
is the same ol' never-ending flux. It's a concept he darts around on the
equally fine "Foto", which finds Courtney reflecting on an old passport
photo: "The past is just a dream." While a line like that could seem
nursery-rhyme commonplace on its own, it builds force nestled amid tracks
like "Awake", a gentle apology for strumming next door that offers its own
ruminations on the past, and "Asleep", a backwards-effects reverie that's
somewhere between an "Oh Yoko!" dream and "I'm Only Sleeping". The terrain
may be narrow, but Courtney finds subtleties to explore in his quest for a
wisdom that will keep growing in meaning as months and trend cycles pass.
Many Moons isnÆt all painstaking philosophy on the inevitability of change. A
more immediate highlight is "Northern Highway", which cruises along, suitably
upbeat, as it balances existential questions ("Do you feel just like a
stranger?") with the narrator's avowal that he could never retire to a place
without seasonsùall via a chiming arrangement befitting the Left Banke. Or
"Little Blue", a windows-down listen about windows-down listens thatÆs named
after CourtneyÆs old car. By contrast, on "Focus", when Courtney implores, as
if giving Magic Eye advice, "The trick really is not to try," it's a bit too
on the nose; besides, he already put it better on Real Estate's 2011
sophomore LP, Days, singing, "Our careless lifestyle, it was not so unwise."
The trick is not to reveal it's a trick.
The simple complexities of Many Moons all come together on the 10th and final
song, "Airport Bar". It's about, yes, airport barsùplaces that stay the same
while the people who pass through them speed around the globe. The music here
is the album's most hypnotic; the lyrics are its most observant. Courtney's
raconteur has been asleep, dreaming, before he finally realizes whatÆs real:
"Please don't go forgetting about me," he repeats, understanding full well
that Timehop, Facebook's "On This Day" feature, or even ripped-jeans-pocket
Polaroids are no substitute for "just being here." It's all unassuming enough
that it almost breezes past, and, if Courtney didn't know better, he might
even say that's the point.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
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*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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