Moon: The Green Lilac Park

There is a bit of a buzz about Moon and their Green Lilac Park album at the moment, with social media ablaze with interviews and reviews and posters appearing all about Liverpool. Maybe this is due to the pedigree of Moon’s lineup, with Dave ‘Yorkie’ Palmer, Mick Dolan and Andy Diagram encompassing the wonderful Moongoose along with Pale Fountains, Space and Shack, to name but three.

Maybe it is because Moon is made up of people with some experience of the music biz and who know how to conduct such a campaign.

But whatever the reason, the music has to live up to the hype. So where does that leave us with Green Lilac Park?

The good news is that all that experience has resulted in a record that justifies the buzz, full of shimmery summer pop that surfs across genres with glee.

It all starts off with A Day For Tomorrow, a gentle introduction that encompasses ’80s indie pop, hummable singalong verses that lodge themselves in the memory long after the song itself has finished and a few Beatles-esque flourishes, which they can be forgiven for due to the fact they have an actual McCartney in the band in the form of Joshua McCartney (son of Liverpool’s own Mike McCartney). Acoustic and electric guitars vie for attention before the bass and drums kick in and lift the song. There is an undeniably upbeat feel to this first song that raises a smile and sets the toes to tapping.

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Before we get too settled in and start to expect an album made up entirely of upbeat umbers, next track Sing To Me reveals the other side of Moon. It is a catchy as hell minor key number that sees Mick Dolan singing “I’m like an old man dying and my car’s on fire” in the chorus. Despite the general sad feeling in the song, it benefits from a lush arrangement that further proves the benefit of the band’s experience and is another earworm that I have found myself singing while I go about my day.

The Spaniard starts off featuring a strident trumpet that gives a mariachi flavour to proceedings and again shows Moon’s refusal to confine themselves musically. There is a literary feel to the lyrics as the describe the song’s eponymous hero “he lives his life under scorching skies, he’s a man who walks amongst the blind” and the lyrics and music together give a spaghetti western vibe to the whole thing.

Goodbye James features glittering tremolo guitars and a voice that sounds as if it was coming to us through a cheap loudhailer. Guitars are used sparingly to great effect while Dolan sings “Goodbye my love, I’ll see you at the end” before some searing Link Wray style guitar plays an affecting solo.

Unicorn sees the return of a spaghetti western influence, starting off with some Morricone style whistling before a song leaning towards a sea shanty reveals itself. I have said this before and I’’ll say it again here, but the only other band I have heard who can manage this cross pollination of genres without losing their signature sound is the American band, The Decemberists, who have managed to sell out decent sized venues across the globe. Going by what we have heard here, we see no reason why a similar fate should escape Moon.

Hey Mother is an atmospheric piano-led ballad from a child to an absentee parent that wonders “Hey mother, what are you doing now, remember those days so long ago?” before a swelling chorus of “The light, see the light in your eyes and I don’t wanna say goodbye” and suddenly there isn’t a dry eye in the house. Andy Diagram’s trumpet combining with chiming keyboard notes raises the emotional stakes still further before leaving the closing to a lonely, solitary piano.

Life serves to lift the mood with its breezy indie pop feel and lifting harmonies and calls local heroes The Real People to my mind. Can You Hear Me is next with a shifting coat of many colours, starting with an angular post punk sound before effortlessly changing before our very eyes into a melancholy chorus and back again. Moon are especially adept at writing memorable choruses and Can You Hear Me is no exception to this emerging rule.

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Most of the songs on Green Lilac Park abide by the pop maxim of never outstaying their welcome, and Green Apple Sun clocks in at an impressively concise two-minutes, forty-eight seconds, but once you’ve done what you need to do and said what you need to say, why hang around shuffling your feet? Green Apple Sun is a jaunty Merseybeat affair that manages to get perfect harmonies, childhood nostalgic whimsy and summer vibes into its brief running time. It has an almost nursery rhyme simplicity that again drives the song’s catchiness into your mind for an age afterwards.

It isn’t always summer days and clear blue skies in Green Lilac Park however and Storm Clouds reminds us that sometimes we need to be prepared, as Dolan sings “It’s always good to be indoors, you need to see the trouble on the way.” The loudhailer effect is back on the vocals, adding a menacing edge to the song. All is well though as the song reveals “I’ll be safe today, when storm clouds come my way”.

Passenger Seat is a gentle ballad, slightly mournful in the way looking back can be. A soundscape creates gentle swells and the song floats along on top of a lush background and mellow piano arpeggios before a vocal that puts me in mind of a more pastoral version of Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig In The Sky brings the song to a close. This is something that Moon do exceedingly well, create songs that consist of many different parts, that take you to many different places in just under three minutes.

We leave the Green Lilac Park to the strains of Because You Can, as perfect a slice of pop music as you are likely to hear in this or any other lifetime. It is just the close the album needs and allows the album to finish on a high. Precisely picked guitars, an epically uplifting chorus and breathy backing vocals makes sure that, although we are leaving Green Lilac Park for now, we will undoubtedly be back.

Green Lilac Park is somewhere we should all return to; to sit and relax in its gentle warmth and lay back in its dreamy fields.

Green Lilac Park lives up to the hype and then some.

Green Lilac Park is out now via Velvet Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.