Moon – The Green Lilac Park

It was released just five days ago, and yet Moon’s “The Green Lilac Park” has already begun to haunt the speakers of those who have fallen under its spell.

Yannis Papaioannou

Maybe it’s the name… They’re called Moon , and that alone brings to mind old romances, August nights, but also an underground promise of strangeness. Maybe it’s the album cover The Green Lilac Park , which looks like it came from some hidden Liverpool park, where kids grew up listening to Pale Fountains instead of lullabies. Maybe it’s the line-up: Dave “Yorkie” Palmer, Mick Dolan and Andy Diagram carry on their backs memories and melodies from Moongoose, Space, Shack, and the aura of a city that knows how to carve melodies through the fog.

Whatever it is that has ignited the flame around Moon, one thing is certain: The Green Lilac Park is a beautiful record. It’s a place unknown, and as they say, “it’s a state of mind.” Maybe that’s why they’ve been seen plastering posters on the streets of Liverpool as if it were a cult film premiere. Maybe that’s why social media is talking about them with the same enthusiasm they once had for The La’s.

And the album? Fortunately, the album stands up to its name. From the very first track, “A Day For Tomorrow,” Moon set off on a walk in the sun with indie pop innocence, Beatles-esque touches (justifiably so: the band includes Joshua McCartney, son of Mike McCartney (Paul’s brother) from The Scaffold and that incredibly beautiful British euphoria that makes the heart beat like a small tambourine at a campfire.

But they don’t stop there. “Sing To Me” throws you with its first notes to the other side of the moon. Mick Dolan’s voice says “I’m like an old man dying and my car’s on fire” and you suddenly feel like you’re inside a broken-down old Mini Cooper, parked at the edge of your memory, which you eventually leave and continue your walk through memories alone. Melancholy, but with layers of violins and guitars that wrap you sweetly, a piece that sticks to you and that whispers (with taste) to you the defeat of modern life.

The Spaniard” is the surprise. A mariachi trumpet opens the song proudly and gives the track a spaghetti western feel, while the lyrics unfold a hero who seems to have come out of a Borges book. An unexpected, but so fitting parenthesis to the album as a whole.

And “Goodbye James…” follows, and there time dissolves. Tremolo guitars, a voice distorted as if playing from an old radio, and a farewell that makes you think of everyone you never said “goodbye to.” And then Link Wray’s guitar comes in like a beautiful wave that never reached the shore.

As this album progresses, you understand why The Green Lilac Park has gained all this hype, because it does not seek or claim any revolution, nor any dreaminess. It simply whispers to you the idea that the older you get, the more you appreciate those moments that seem to belong to no era, but only to your own. And that’s why Moon gives us an album that could play in the background of a spring breakup that hurts in the heat of summer, an afternoon kiss on the beach or a wait at a station for a train that will never come. But, anyway, this album does not need hype to survive. It has already built its own little world. And, if you’re lucky, you might find your own green lilac park to get lost in there.

Unicorn” takes us back to the spaghetti western vibe that so suits Moon. It begins with whistles as if they came out of Morricone’s universe, to give way to a melody that would be equally suitable for a naval dirge or a ballad softly sung in distant ports. It is this almost acrobatic ability of the band to marry disparate genres without losing its identity that impresses, and makes us remember the American Decemberists or the Londoners Bitter Springs, bands that throughout their career have demonstrated an incredible cross-cultural reconciliation with such naturalness.

“Hey Mother” is a ballad that breaks into silence. “Life” changes mood, brings an indie pop breath reminiscent of several fellow countrymen poets of melody. The sound is bright, the harmonies flutter over a light rhythmic base, like a liberated takeoff after a confession.

“Can You Hear Me” comes to show how skillfully Moon moves between styles, with a bit more post punk references on the guitars, a sharp, nervous step on a cobblestone, transforming with its melancholic, almost pleading chorus. And then returning to the original pattern again. This fluctuating rhythm becomes their trademark and the chorus of the song, another proof that Moon have a good dowry of hooks to nail to your heart. Like the ones that follow in the beautiful “Storm Clouds”.

And when this walk ends, then, in The Green Lilac Park , you don’t leave with voices in your ears or fireworks in the sky. You leave with a faint smile and a memory that you don’t know if you really experienced or dreamed of.

As with any true musical journey, Moon don’t hold your hand and tell you “come along”, they let you get lost and in less than three minutes each time, they set up worlds that seem more real than the silence that follows them. The Green Lilac Park is like a bench in modern musical reality. A bench under some lilacs where you let your thoughts bloom but never came back to pick them up. But with every song, Moon reminds us that music when made with truth, humor, and a little rain in the gardens doesn’t need to explain anything. Just be.