During the queasy, airlocked “The Astronaut”, Jake Harms belts out, “I’m nostalgia” and “I’m alcoholic dreams of being 19, 23.” Both of these lines are indicative of What Moon Things’ preoccupation with both the allure and incapacitation of addiction. Unsurprisingly, the trio’s debut LP is haunted by the most recognizable junkie of folklore, the vampire—just peep the inclusion of both “The Vampire” and “Vampir” on the tracklist and its cover, which would look mighty fine on the front of a high school goth's Trapper Keeper in 1992. And they indeed have a nostalgic, youthful idea of how vampires and indie rock should interact—think “Nosferatu Man” and “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, and forget Stephenie Meyer ever happened. As such, nothing about What Moon Things is sexy, cute or dashing; instead, these eight anti-romantic horror stories find a band who's fanged, emaciated and out for blood.
What Moon Things developed their doddering, incommunicado sound in New Paltz, New York, a place that's isolated even by the standards of the other isolated Empire State outposts that have made major contributions to indie rock in 2014—it’s about three hours from Perfect Pussy’s homebase of Syracuse, about half that from the SUNY Purchase enclave that has abetted NYC’s minor explosion of folk weirdos. You might think What Moon Things was part of the latter scene, seeing as how Harms’ voice is almost indistinguishable from that of Porches./Frankie Cosmos’ Aaron Maine; his singing is off-key but on-point, a desperate yelp from an unstable man, though the assumed squalor makes you think of a guy trapped in a well rather than a dive bar.
Cooperstown and Queens are about equidistant from New Paltz and if What Moon Things didn't drive upstate to see the Modest Mouse and Brand New co-headlining show that took place earlier this year, I guarantee they'll head to the city for the one in August. And I guarantee they hoped the former played nothing from after 2000 and the latter played nothing prior to 2006. What Moon Things tease out the similarities between those responsible for “Jesus Christ” and “Jesus Christ Was an Only Child”: for one thing, a protagonist who narrates with an uneasy, medicated or even kinda alien worldview. Either way, something’s just off about the guy and he functions more as a slightly removed observer of life than a participant.
The connection is also played out in Harms' guitars; befitting his name, nothing here is strummed or caressed. He fills out the spaces of What Moon Things with palm-muted clean riffs, gnarled note clusters, and pinched harmonics flanged out to be slightly sharp. John Morisi plays with a similarly effective anti-technique; his disregard for actual timekeeping and proclivity to just hit every single piece of his kit as hard as possible would drive a drum teacher insane. Only the quasi-title track keeps the same tempo throughout its entirety and that’s only because it’s a one-minute instrumental. Abetted by the dry, stark production, every drum thwack is the sound of metal hitting bone and flesh, the lack of decay echoing the shock of seeing someone actually get injured. Harms’ vocals and odd melodic sense ensure What Moon Things sticks; Morisi ensures that you hear them differently every time.
Within the context of What Moon Things, the physical musicianship draws out an underlying potential for violence in Harms’ downcast demeanor. He sings of vampires when he’s more of a zombie, a zoned-out, single-minded half-human. “Get you” is notably spelled as “getchoo” in the lyrics sheet and that should give you an indication of where Harms often goes mentally to source the pathetic, needy nature of male heartbreak: “I’m such an adult/ With high school stuck in my head”; “I see your face on every girl”. “Staring at the Radio” is the one time he’s actually able to get out of the house and it’s only to sit in a car, waiting for the battery to die; the title itself twists a common trope to be even more fucking piteous, like he can’t even handle the visual stimuli of television.
What Moon Things describe the totality of this sound as “dreamo”, which I believe was a phrase first coined by non-descript At the Drive-In offshoot Sparta; What Moon Things sound nothing like Sparta and Sparta sounded nothing like particularly atmospheric emo. What they mean to say is that they like both shoegaze and emo, two genres which really don’t intersect as much as one would expect; both are concerned with conveying a feeling, but the former stresses sensual implication, the latter articulation. What Moon Things aren’t very “dreamo” either: their shoegaze isn’t pretty, as the gaseous, suffocating “Doesn’t Make Much Sense” and “Squirrel Girl” finds Harms’ head in an oven rather than the clouds.
While fine pieces of exhaust pipe ambience, those two songs are less intriguing than the striking minimalism of “The Vampire” and “The Astronaut”, proof that What Moon Things benefit from directness and concision. This much is evidenced in What Moon Things potentially qualifying as one of the strongest EPs of the year, but it’s a full-length that may have been forced against its will to get there. The consecutive sequencing of its two most distorted tracks, the instrumental and the near-reprise of “Vampir” verge on introducing redundancy to a very short record. Still, the rousing closer “Son, Where’s the Fire” makes a great case for What Moon Things’ promise rather than their limitations; the group chorus is the only true extroverted, urgent moment, and it gives an compelling voice to a cosmic teenage demand to take the power back: “Sun, where’s the fucking fire?” After all, What Moon Things recognize the world is a vampire, sent to drain.
