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The Moon Shells Build A "House Of Air"

Lucy Gellman | October 2nd, 2020

The Moon Shells Build A

Music  |  Arts & Culture  |  COVID-19

 

HouseOfAir
Album artwork by Sam Moth. 

The beginning of “Burnt Swamp” feels like a ball of yarn, unraveling quickly. Strings coast upward, singsong and unimpeded. Banjo strums along beneath it. Suddenly, there’s a throaty fiddle that can sing and a triangle jingling a listener into being.

“Burnt Swamp” is the third track on The Moon Shells’ House Of Air, an album that makes 2020 feel, for a moment, like it’s going to be okay. Instead of running from or right into the mess and tumult of this year, the group faces it with a kind of measured, understated grace, playing in the fall with a comfort that feels hard to find.

The Moon Shells comprises Maggie Shar, Brian Slattery, Laura Murawski, Molly Merrett, and Charlie Shaw. The album, which dropped Friday morning, is available via Bandcamp for streaming and download.

“We have this rule that things can't get too dark,” said Slattery in a phone call Thursday night. “Left to our own devices, we might go there. But there are so many people already that write dark things. Not just because of this moment … the material just kind of tends to go dark. We were like, that's enough already. There's enough of that.”

From the beginning—the group’s song “Ready,” which it premiered with a video during lockdowns earlier this year—it feels like an aural, emotional time capsule to a world before COVID-19. The bulk of House Of Air was recorded last fall and early this year, before the first whispers of the virus hit the East Coast. There’s strange, largely imperceptible comfort there: a reminder of those days when the world was still on fire, but a little less on fire.

“Ready” captures that feeling: it sweeps upward with an ease and hopefulness that is now almost impossible to summon. In the song, musicians sing and dance their way through a literal storm, their voices threaded with the rhythm of rain on a roof and hands sinking into the wet earth. Around them, the banjo mirrors the sound of drops. Vocals swell and melt into each other, layered into a not-quite-harmony that ends with a stuttering drum and single, short giggle.

It’s a joy that is tempting to sink into. “Sleeping Giant” welcomes in a listener with soft, smooth banjo that gets insistent right before vocals come in. Slattery slides over the track, unfussy and unbothered. In the album’s universe, it is night and musicians are warm and safe under the covers. A dog licks Slattery’s nose. The thought of a pandemic is nowhere in sight. When Shar’s voice joins, it feels like she has always belonged there.

I hear nothing/Curled up with you happy in my sleep
Outside, shouting, we’re whispers in the spaces in between

These are more than suburban middle class musings: musicians conjure a world where folks can still snuggle in and play with their dogs and make music together without the weight of humanity slowly smoldering beneath. Just as they did in the group’s 2019 Seaside Asylum, musicians reveal themselves as wordsmiths: lyrics are tight and lovely, often tapping into the subconscious and the other-worldly.

In the album’s title track, the natural world is a close friend and confidant, doing its own thing as human activity goes awry (but somehow remains, in Shar's hands, quite charming) around it. Beyond the lyrics, there are entire instrumental universes, as enjoyable to listen and re-listen to as the words themselves. 

House Of Air also refuses to be put into any genre: the rhythms are folksy until they are suddenly Balkan, and then a little bluesy, and then a little West African. “Burnt Swamp,” a bluegrassy jam that Slattery said comes from the idea “that New England is just one big giant swamp,” turns right over to “Blessings” in a transition that is surprising, but never jarring. Instead, it gently reminds listeners to open their ears and stay on for the ride.

In the song, the first whisper of strings comes with a hand clap and steady, deep drumbeat that tells a listener they are not in New England anymore (Kiev seems like a more accurate bet). Slattery’s voice swoops and splinters over the lyrics; it circles like a vulture eyeing its prey below. But the blessings in question are upbeat: the group bestows its benedictions on the land, on young children, on other people. The song gathers up hope and holds it tightly to its chest.

Even when the group dips into more ominous, uncharted territory, it seems to self-correct and lift itself back up. “Quarantine Waltz” may be a reminder that one has to dance all on their own in this landscape, but it’s never unbearably sad. The heavy unrequitedness of “You’re The Man for Me” is offset by lyrics that turn beaches, night skies and animals into an act of pure magic. In “She Ain’t Gonna Wait,” strings circle each other in a fast, delicious dance as percussion edges in and Shar spins a story. Her voice bends and winds around the words.

By the time musicians reach “Warm Day,” the album doesn’t feel like it could end any other way. The world slows down. Somewhere in the song, the climate reclaims itself. Slattery’s vocals are whine and gravel; Shar and Merrett join in, lush and layered through the end of the song.

In this world, bodies can be together again without the fear of sickness or death. Musicians can gather without masks and social distancing—and can look to the future because they believe there’s going to be one. The Moon Shells extend their collective hands, palms open.

It’s an invitation to let the group take the wheel and let things be okay. To come inside and hide away for a while, until the world feels possible all over again.

Download House of Air on The Moon Shells' Bandcamp page