Canadian folk-rockers Half Moon Run, have officially released their third album “A Blemish In The Great Light”, and i'm loving it.
"I think this album still has the sound people expect from us, balanced with more experimentation," said drummer/multi-instrumentalist Dylan Phillips. "We’ve been diving deep into some styles that we haven’t necessarily explored before. Things get a little heavier, a little harder." Have a listen to the album here
Half Moon Run are already reflecting on this album journey to date, "One important thing we learned this time around was to diversify our focus. Because if we get too tunnel-vision on a project it starts to get kind of strange. As an artist and musician, you need to work with other people. You need to do other things, so you can draw from different experiences that all build on each other."
"A Blemish in the Great Light" marks a very welcome return for the band. As a group whose art is deliberately left to do all the talking, it’s a record that takes strands from their previous work; all multi-layered instrumentation, intricate shapes and patterns, and a veritable cascading of melody, and merges it with something painted with more vivid colours, and with a rare playfulness too.
The intensity and almost terse sense of atmosphere that dictates their live shows are perhaps thawed a little on these new recordings, allowing for something warmer, more embracing. Half Moon Run have noticeably matured as musicians, giving each member a fresh sense of space to complement each other’s myriad of talents and musicianship.
The band came together in 2009 in Montreal’s Mile End, when Molander and Dylan Phillips—students and recent transplants from Vancouver Island—connected with Devon Portielje, who was fresh out of Ottawa. (In mid 2012 they tapped a third Comox-born musician, Isaac Symonds, to intensify their live show.) “If we had one real stroke of luck with this group, it was meeting each other,” says Half Moon Run’s Conner Molander. Now going on ten years together, the Montreal indie band is deep in the final push of their third album, and the temptation to look forward is as risky as the lure of looking back. Molander seems sanguine. He pauses, then adds,
“But if you have a bit of luck it’s your responsibility to put in the work. It would be impossible to live with ourselves if we weren’t devoted to it, to working on it.”
Half Moon Run has also expanded their already impressive tour itinerary into 2020, adding another 20 international headline shows. The band have also partnered with PLUS1 once again so that $1 from every ticket sold will go to Project Peanut Butter (PPB) and the treatment of severe acute malnutrition through effective, locally produced, ready-to-use therapeutic foods.
Check out the full list of tour dates at www.halfmoonrun.com, which include shows in Bristol, London, Glasgow and Manchester, with London already long since sold out.
