Sometime rediscovering an artist is as good as finding something new.
I showed up to this expecting to see Man of Moon onstage at 7:30 and got Andrew Wasylyk instead.
I seem to remember a promo or maybe even a crowd funding campaign a while back, so was aware of his solo work and of course I’ve seen his other band a few times, but not recently.
The set up was simple, guitar or piano, flugelhorn and voice and it worked really well in the slowly filling space of St Luke’s.
There’s a quirkiness in the songs and they show the vocal range that I don’t think the Hazey Janes ever did, though could be wrong.
Though there was a Hazey Janes song in the set. The others had warmth, sadness and occasional darkness .
I think Man of Moon are a band who got away. I seem to remember having them on a list of things to cover and missing out for some now forgotten reason.
They weren’t quite what I expected. A lot of their stuff that I’d heard was quite dreamy – almost psychedelic – in a similar vein to something like Tame Impala.
While bands like that I always found a bit samey, Man of Moon aren’t. In the 25-ish minute timeslot, they took us on a little journey, sometimes to some pretty dark sounding places, are a lot heavier and harder hitting than I expected and for a two-piece it has to be said – My God, they are LOUD!
The opposite I suppose of C Duncan. Normally when I’ve seen something that started out as a one man thing or as a studio construction it has been disappointing; tonight thankfully is one of those exceptions.
The songs are so upbeat, rich, playful and just generally lovely. We are treated to a mix from Architect, The Midnight Sun and some new songs and they work so well live.
The vocal harmonies just work so well, every song having layers of lush sounds and the bass sounded thumping and funkier than on record, the guitars spangled rather than jangled.
The space of St. Luke’s has really nice acoustics but if there’s one complaint it’s this: there were a couple of points in the set with quieter songs and some heartbreaking (ok, heart-warming, they’re not that sort of band) moments which spoiled a bit by the music coming through the walls from the bar as it seemed like the volume went up in there as the night went on.
Minor issue and one not quite able to take the shine of what was otherwise a really beautiful gig.
