Hailing from Ohio’s esteemed state capitol, Moon High is not your typical Folk/Pop quartet. They sell buttons on their website, moonhighmusic.com, but the images are not self-promotional depictions of their non-smiling, photo-composited faces from the cover of their excellent sophomore album, Six Suns. Instead, the images are of four of Jupiter’s moons. Moon High’s music is similarly unexpected, as the Columbus foursome combine an affinity for ’60s American Folk and its British counterpart of the same vintage with an energetic and natural approach that is unmistakably contemporary.
There was a good deal of atmosphere on Moon High’s 2008 eponymous debut, where they put the dour in troubadour with a 10-track set that drifted from the speakers like a cool breeze across a warm front porch at dusk. There were moments where Moon High’s music sighed with an Ambient weariness, and they’ve revisited and amplified those textures on Six Suns, while picking up the pace and lightening the mood ever so slightly. There are passages on Six Suns that sound like Neil Young at his most transcendental and others that sound like Crazy Horse at its most visceral. In a similar vein, the use of banjo and flute lends a distinctly ’60s feel to the proceedings, while the ephemeral Ambient touches, wide range of instrumentation and dry production places it squarely in the present tense, like a hootenanny mash-up of Traffic, Fairport Convention and Clem Snide.
Go here to read Brian Baker’s full Sound Advice.
This article appears in Aug 24-30, 2011.