“The band’s first album in 20 years is glorious.. it’s a joy to hear an album that embraces dissonance. That’s not to say Davies’s songs aren’t extremely, stupidly catchy… Slings and Arrows and Head in the Speakers are defiant eulogies to the thrill of sublime, loud, exhilarating, transportive pop.” The Guardian
“As if Syd Barrett had lit out for New Zealand in the 1980s and joined The Chills.” Uncut
“an extraordinary collection of lo-fi psych rock spanning 24 tracks and demanding comparison with fragile gems such as Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs (Damien Lovelock, Imperial Blues) and Skip Spence’s Oar (Needle And Thread)” Sunday Times
Of course, the question is what makes a record a Moles record? “The Moles is a fitting incognito pseudonym synonym nom de guerre pen name make believe disguise cloak for most of the musical ideas I get. The album has accumulated over many years. I recorded in Boston, New York, and Western Massachusetts when ideas and opportunities came along. It is almost like a journal covering 15 years,” explains legendary tunesmith Richard Davies (Cardinal, solo). Recorded with like-minded cohorts such as Boston veterans Bob Fay (Sebadoh) and Malcolm Travis (Sugar), as well as New York City fresh faces Dion Nania (Free Time) and Jarvis Taveniere (Woods), the collected songs on “Tonight’s Music” continue his streak of dazzling and unique psych pop.
With lyrics inspired by the deeply personal, along with Davies wild and cracked imagination, housed within a swirl of sweet melodies and careening blasts, sometimes in the same tune, the end result is an album that delivers everything great about psych rock, without really being a straight psych rock record. If it sounds complicated, it’s not. Davies never loses sight of delivering his songs, whether that means a chugging acoustic train ignited by distortion and holding desperately to the tracks, or a shimmering silver pop gem tickling your ears. Has he created his very own “Madcap Laughs” or “Oar”, twisted around his playful ways, or has he just taught the kids how it is really done (once again)? The sun will rise all summer long as we await the answers.
“Tonight’s Music” follows on the heels of the 2014 comprehensive reissue of their past discography; “Flashbacks and Dream Sequences: The Story Of The Moles” as well as a triumphant show at Glastonbury.
“The greatest differentiator between the work of the Moles and that of their contemporaries, though, is Davies himself. As a presence, there is something deeply and beguilingly inscrutable about him, a purposeful blankness that betrays an enormous amount of weight and depth behind it, and oozes both vulnerability and vitriol when it breaks and cracks.” – PITCHFORK
“Classic sparkling Oceania indie-pop.” – STEREOGUM
“Combining solidly weird psych pop songcraft with a brilliant sense of melody and an ear for subtle beauty in the arrangements.” – ALLMUSIC
Pre-order here:
https://themolesmusic.bandcamp.com/
