LIVE REVIEW | MOON DUO
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Thurs 18 Sept
A balmy late September night in South Wales is a rare occurrence, but tonight is different. Moon Duo have brought over the warm weather and heavy rain with them from San Francisco, and it sets the mood perfectly for their show tonight.
They record as a two-piece, guitar/vocals and electronics with a drum machine, but for tonight’s show they have fleshed out their line up with an actual real-life human drummer. On record, Moon Duo don’t come across as well as they do in a live setting, so it’s a real treat to be immersed in the whole energy of their show tonight.
The Moon Trio (get it) take to the stage with little fanfare and proceed to start a hypnotising and relentless set from the very first notes they play. They’re all mops of hair swathed in dimmed lighting, heads nodding and bodies swaying as they peel out the repetitive riffs and beats that manage to worm their way into your head. Their drummer creates the driving motorik beats better than a drum machine could, and provides a tight backbone for the waves of distorted guitar and synths to create a wall of sound that’s all-enveloping.
One song ends and another starts seamlessly. Projections of blurred lines dance across the stage like a broken VHS, harking back to a time where technology wasn’t everywhere and we weren’t constantly digitally connected. I find myself closing my eyes and feel like I’m in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. It’s the sound of head shops, weed, LSD, and bulldogs being pushed around in baby strollers, before the sun-drenched streets of Northern California were taken over by artisan coffee houses, bakeries and $20 burgers.
They represent the psychedelic side of America, and with my eyes closed I can imagine myself naked in a field after gobbling a load of hallucinogens and thinking that music could be the solution to all of the world’s problems. Then it’s all over as quickly as it began, and I have to walk back to the train half drunk and soaking wet. Reality sucks.
words GARETH MOULE