There is something to be said for meeting musicians where they’re at, rather than where you think they ought to be, but there’s also something to be said for the expectation that wherever the “where” may be, they have a little fun getting there. Otherwise, what’s the point? Taking one’s craft seriously is essential; at the same time, taking oneself seriously is a colossal drag. Nothing sucks the air out of the room, the art gallery, the theater, or the studio faster than pretense, especially when it’s so easily blunted with even the slightest bit of self-reflective playfulness manifested either through a lyric, or a snare drum’s droll snap, or the strum of a chord.
Moontype’s I Let the Wind Push Down on Me swells with that pent-up, blustery need for release, a fine record pushed around, to and fro, by the songwriting’s failure to surrender to anything like whimsy. Maybe the better way to characterize the album’s flaws is with monotony. There’s an observable leap in confidence between it and Bodies of Water, the Chicago quartet’s debut; they’re up a member over their original trio, clearly more comfortable as well as inventive in their composition, but apparently so siloed in the recording process that they neglect to alter their register across any of I Let the Wind Push Down on Me’s 11 tracks. Consequently, the work is pleasurable enough, but far too uniform in its aural impressions for its own good.
Part of that non-differentiable quality ties back to bassist-singer Margaret McCarthy’s vocalism. It’s natural for a singer to find a definitional groove for themselves and stick to it, of course, and McCarthy’s humming falsettos marry well a chunk of I Let the Wind Push Down on Me’s subject matter. But that space she occupies, in the ballpark of Sasha Bell and Nico, ill-suits other songs on the album, too. Whether by lyrical progression or intonation or variation, her singing sounds about the same on “Let Me Cry,” where she pleads with a departing lover to stay with her (“I’m not finished yet / Don’t walk out that door/ Hold me close to you/ Let me cry in your arms once more”), as it does on “Click Clack,” fading away into dreamland as her pet guppy rearranges the furniture in its tank (“At night, I read before I go to sleep / At night, where animals are taking care of me / My fish, he moves all of his rocks around / Click clack, I’m drifting off to sleep to pebble sounds”).
“Click Clack” is the closest I Let the Wind Push Down on Me comes to breaking up its overarching doldrums with liveliness, so credit where it’s due: it’s a brisk, one-minute ditty about the sort of trivial nonsense that comprises much of our waking lives, the stuff we don’t really think much about but probably should, right down to the last things we hear every night before we get our requisite shut-eye. The record functions as a document of McCarthy’s twenties, and the tectonic shifts that occur in that tender age range for all of us; as such, she deserves a high-five at least for having the sort of observational and tongue-in-cheek presence of mind to latch onto a detail so small as is captured on “Click Clack,” a delightful bit of imagery that give specificity to the shifts she’s gone through. It’s amazing how throwaway minutia can personalize a song.
If Moontype sprinkled that degree of buttressing particularity on the rest of the album’s assembly, it’d be something special—or at least, something that stands out. But I Let the Wind Push Down on Me is otherwise homogeneous in recollection. The musicianship is solid; the lyricism is thoughtful. But the thought put into differentiating each track is minimal, and what ends up happening to the whole is a reverse vending machine effect, where each song fed into the ear gets crushed down into a single glob comprising every note, word, and tempo, from one song to the next. If anything remains recognizable when all’s said and done, it’s probably “Click Clack.” Maybe McCarthy would find a bit of humor in that.
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can find his collected work at “his personal blog.” He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.
