- Orindal
- 2025
2021 was a terrible year. The pandemic persisted and uncertainty took over everything. Sometimes it seemed as if it’d never end, and at other times there was hope of life going back to normal. Everyone was fighting about it. As if the sickness forcing us to distance ourselves from each other wasn't enough, there was constant political tumult furthering the divide. For me, I was in college and hopelessly stuck in a romantic situation that felt like a form of self-destruction. Everything was a mess, so I figured I may as well give in to the disarray. I turned to an album by a band I’d never heard of for solace: Moontype’s Bodies Of Water.
Bodies Of Water was the Chicago group’s debut full-length, and its lead single — which was also their first song ever — was “Ferry,” a truly powerful, sweeping tearjerker that opens with the lines, “I miss you before you’re gone,” which, naturally, prompted me to burst into tears immediately on many occasions. “When we grow, we grow apart/ I’m left floating in the dark,” Margaret McCarthy sings vulnerably against light guitar, before the instrumentation crashes like a tidal wave in the chorus, somehow offering a sense of comfort that grounds the listener instead of making them feel lost at sea. In addition to the beautiful anguish of that track, Bodies Of Water also possessed exuberant, infectious moments like on the eager, flirty “About You” and the clamorous, invigorating “Lush.”
Now, four years later, Moontype are back with its follow-up, I Let The Wind Push Down On Me, continuing a pattern with the band’s affinity for nature. “How I Used To Dance” serves as a sprawling opener as McCarthy’s delicate soprano recalls nights of dancing in her room and smashing 40s in parking lots, not without “feeling bad about the broken glass.” Her voice floats over twinkling sounds, including the woozy emissions of a glass harp. The song shimmers and soars while McCarthy shares moving revelations: “And I do not regret/ A thing I ever said.” Throughout I Let The Wind Push Down On Me, the landscapes are expansive as endless meadows or oceans that blend into the horizon.
“Long Country” and “Walk In The Woods” reach for peace through connecting with the Earth, and both retain the emotion and endearing whimsy of their debut. “Let Me Cry” is a breezy anthem dedicated to weeping; McCarthy hides from rejection by pulling the bed blanket over head and begs, “I’m not finished yet/ Don’t walk out that door/ Hold me close to you/ Let me cry in your arms once more.” “Anymore” begins with McCarthy crushing berries between her fingers and plucking leaves from trees; on “Click Clack,” she falls asleep to the sound of her fish moving pebbles.
Moontype could’ve transferred the gorgeous texture of Bodies Of Water straight into the sophomore effort, but the four-piece vastly open up their palette. “Crushed” is a wonderfully surprising dive into slowcore darkness; McCarthy’s whispery confessions are intimate as she wonders how to handle heavy feelings — and what better way than making a beautifully haunting song?
On “Starry Eyed,” she revels in the euphoria of drunkenness: “Heat is a miracle/ When it passes through ya/ Something that you cannot see,” not without acknowledging the self-destructive edge, reflecting on the ecstasy of being intoxicated at work and returning to places of pain: "Why do I keep opening that door?" she wonders in a soaring soprano. The guitars are mathier and gloomier than ever before, picking up momentum until the riffs are inexorable whirlwinds, like the motif of looking to nature for help also means accepting the possibility of disasters, of rampant tornados and earthquakes, and surrendering to their madness.
“Let Me Be” is a victorious finale. McCarthy repeats hopeful, poetic lines like incantations as she longs for solitude, announcing her realization: “I can’t live in the past/ If I want to be okay.” She'll "suck out the poison on my own time" and "take the sunlight in/ Into my open bones." The guitars are tender and patient as she formally decides to move forward, choosing to be "alive to all the feelings in my body." I Let The Wind Push Down On Me is a beautiful album through and through.
I Let The Wind Push Down On Me is out 5/23 on Orindal.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Year Of No Light's Les Maîtres Fous
• Jess Kerber's From Way Down Here
• Sports Team's Boys These Days
• Dirty Nice's Planet Weekend
• Andy Frasco & The U.N.'s Growing Pains
• BED's everything hurts
• Louise's Confessions
• CDSM's Convertible Hearse
• Sparks' MAD!
• emptyset's Dissever
• TajMo's Room On The Porch
• Pan Amsterdam's Confines
• SENNA's Stranger To Love
• Pachyman's Another Place
• Skunk Anansie's The Painful Truth
• Death In Vegas' Death Mask
• Lou Tides' Autostatic!
• The Northern Territories' A Star In Orbit Still
• Thalia Zedek Band's The Boat Outside Your Window
• Cola Boyy's Quit To Play Chess
• Quinie's Forefowk, Mind Me
• Sedona's Getting Into Heaven
• Robert Forster's Strawberries
• Amble's Reverie
• These New Puritans' Crooked Wing
• Florry's Sounds Like...
• Earth's WEM Dominator (Live In London NW1, 2016)
• Sophia Kennedy's Squeeze Me
• Anyma's The End Of Genesys
• Rich Brian's Where Is My Head?
• Smerz's Big City Life
• Lindstrøm's Sirius Syntoms
• bob junior's friends, vol. 2
• Couch Prints' Pitbull 2
• Cardinal Black's Midnight At The Valencia
• MORA's Lo Mismo De Siempre
• The Grogans' Stagger
• Jesse Quebbeman-Turley's Hosana: The Messe De Nostre Dame
• Most Things' Bigtime
• Eva Novoa's Novoa/Kamaguchi/Cleaver Trio, Vol. 2
• Marc Ribot's Map Of A Blue City
• Age Of Apocalypse's In Oblivion
• You Vandal's this is where people come to die
• Home Is Where's Hunting Season
• Joe Jonas' Music For People Who Believe In Love
• Junk Drawer's Days Of Heaven
• Ffa Coffi Pawb's CLYMHALIO
• Ayman Fanous & Joe Morris' Zuhour
• Resavoir & Matt Gold's Horizon
• Gabito Ballesteros' Ya No Se Llevan Serenatas
• Chepang's Jhyappa
• SEDONA's Getting Into Heaven
• Howard Jones' Piano Composed
• Ganavya's Nilam
• Shamir's Ten
• Bad Beat's LP 2025
• Francis Bebey's Trésor Magnétique
• Chuck D's Radio Armageddon
• Stereolab's Instant Holograms On Metal Film
• Quelza's Pensa Poetico EP
• DJ.Fresh & The Musalini's Live And Let Fly
• Green Day's Saviors (édition de luxe)
• Casanora's The Year Of The Jellyfish EP
• 7Seconds' New Wind Reissue
• Nymphlord's Rough Blue Blanket EP
• Evan Bartels' To Make You Cry EP
• Reyna Tropical's Malegría En La Oscuridad EP
• kuru's Stay true forever Mixtape
• Credit's The Last Few Years EP
• Ava Maybee's Orange Drive EP
• Our Chronicle's If These Walls Could Speak EP
• shower curtain's words from a wishing well (Deluxe Edition)
• Various Artists' True Names
• benches' Kill The Lights EP
• The Rumjacks' Dead Anthems (Deluxe)
• virgin orchestra's LET IT BURN EP
• Year Of No Light's Les Maîtres Fous Live Album
• Ketiov's The Art Of Structure EP
• GB's Ressed / Falter EPs
• MSPAINT's No Separation EP
• Jonathon Crompton's Cantata No. 1: An Island Seen And Felt
• Myles Smith's A Moment, A Minute... EP
• Clara Joy's What We Have Now
• Julia Michaels' Second Self EP
• Fredo Bang's The Big Bang
• David Bazan's Headphones (20th Anniversary Reissue)
• Marble Ghosts' The Greatest Divide EP
• Boldy James & Your Boy Posca's Magnolia Leflore EP
• Various Artists' Hell's Kitchen (Original Broadway Cast Recording) - Deluxe Edition
• The Alchemist's Mixed Fruit Series. VOL. 1 - PINEAPPLE GINGER
• Angelo LeRoi's eLRoi EP
• Revival Season's Formless Mixtape
• LeoStayTrill's Home Alone EP
