Lo Moon Break Down Their New Album A Modern Life Track By Track: Exclusive

Jonah Krueger

February 25, 2022 at 10:30 AM·7 min read

The post Lo Moon Break Down Their New Album A Modern Life Track By Track: Exclusive appeared first on Consequence.

Our Track by Track feature provides artists a space to share the stories behind each song on their latest release. Today, Lo Moon’s Matt Lowell takes us through the songs of their sophomore effort, A Modern Life.

“Vibe” is an overused term in the era of TikTok, but when it comes to LA-based quartet Lo Moon, man do they have a vibe. At once nostalgic and forward-looking, the act (Matt Lowell, Crisanta Baker, Samuel Stewart, and Sterling Laws) excels at the solitary anthem, making music that’s perfect for both a cinematic climax and an aimless night drive. Today (February 25th) marks the release of their sophomore album, A Modern Life.

A Modern Life picks up where Lo Moon’s debut left off with synth landscapes and dramatic dynamics. This time around, though, there’s an added sense of direction. “We wanted to make a record we could play live,” says Lowell. “On our debut, we’d barely thought about playing a show before mastering the album.”

Perhaps the newfound focus on performance comes from the impressive roster of artists they’ve shared a stage with since the release of their debut. Playing with acts like CHVRCHES, Glass Animals, and The War On Drugs, Lo Moon spent the last few years surrounded by similarly-minded artists with notable stage shows.

The result is an album that begs for a live production — songs like “Raincoats” seem to come prepackaged with visions of blue and red stage lights and the taste of a fog machine. Such an experience is hopefully in the works for Lo Moon’s upcoming tour; pick up tickets here. Until then, A Modern Life exists just as perfectly as a mood-setting, danceable 36 minutes.

Stream A Modern Life and check out Lowell’s exclusive breakdown below.

“Carried Away”

This song started as a chord progression we were messing around with while on the road in 2017. The album was pretty much finished in 2019 and we remembered that there was a spirit about the demo and revisited it. We got together and finished writing the song the day before covid lockdowns started happening in America. We were really interested in writing a song about connecting with the people in our lives on a deeper level, quite strange given what was around the corner.

There’s so much surface level, or what feels like purely device level connection, I wonder sometimes if we’ve forgotten how to make real world connections. The demo always had a Verve or Richard Ashcroft spirit about it and we said why not lean into that and open the record with this new energy.

“Dream Never Dies”

There’s always one song that you feel anchors the record. “Dream Never Dies” was that song to A Modern Life. The song came out of a jam session with our friend Tony Buchen, and from the first-day demo, there was a spirit. As I get older, I find myself asking bigger questions, worrying about losing the people closest to me, and I explored that juxtaposition with the nostalgia of my youth. When you’re younger, those questions and anxieties are less apparent.

Musically, we worked really hard to explore the expanse of the sound while maintaining an intimacy and capture the fragility of youth. This song will take on a life of its own live.

“Expectations”

This was the first song we worked on for this record. We knew going into this record we wanted to make a band record, as we had learned so much about playing together while touring the first record. The addition of our drummer Sterling as a full-time member really helped us, and “Expectations” is a great example of this.

I found myself exploring the feeling of being a teen, unafraid to chase my dreams, unaware and naive about the complexities of life, and what it feels like to struggle to live up to the expectations I have set for myself.

“Deficit Of Wonder”

I wrote a poem, or maybe it was more of a stream of consciousness reflection inspired by Kurt Andersen’s book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, and it was living in my notes on my iPhone for a bit. We all thought after the first three songs of the record a nice meditative breath could be interesting, and Kurt Andersen’s book had been a constant well of inspiration lyrically for me on this record.

We wanted to capture that nostalgia and that innocence in an interesting way, so we had my nephew read the reflection I wrote. We could all use an excess of wonder in our life.

“Modern Life”

When we came off the road in 2018, I was feeling quite alone. I hadn’t figured out how to approach the next record and this song came out of that anxiety. The anxiety that your friends might lose their trust in you right when you need them, that the expectations I had of myself would never be met, and the relationships and bonds we’ve created are not as strong as you think they are. A lot of the themes that anchored this record, really.

This song was the hardest to crack sonically, and I think there were no less than 10 versions. I remember re-writing this song with Sam about ten times alone. In the end we linked up with our friend Chris Walla (of Death Cab For Cutie) and he helped us find a new approach. 808s and Genesis’ “Duchess,” who knew.

“Raincoats”

“Raincoats” started as a very pure jam in the room. I had a strange and unique voice live setting on my voice through the studio speakers, and improvised a version of what would become the intro. Thank God our friend Tony the engineer was recording, or we would never have this song. The band was creating this beautiful bed that we kept chasing down.

The song presents itself as a timeline; it starts in a place of tranquility of freedom and innocence and ends up in a world of chaos and anxiety. Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland was a big inspiration for this one as well. The idea that history and choices have shaped the fabric of our daily life and what some would call this new post-truth society. We cannot wait to play this one live. When we cracked this one, it felt like a huge step forward for us.

“Digging Up The Dead”

I loved the line “digging up the dead,” and just tried to write a song anchored around this idea. This obsession with the past, these demons you can’t shake; again, a reflection on how history shapes our paradigm, and what people turn to in order to cope. The conversation of the band and the parts in this song is one of my favorite moments on the record.

“Eyes On The Prize”

Maybe the closest moment of Lo Moon channeling a little bit of Tunnel Of Love. A lot of the initial sessions we did at The Village studios made the final version. I think Yves Rothman, our co-producer and all around cheerleader, really helped us find the voice for this song. There’s a lot of moments in life that work to run you or scare you off your path and this song was a reminder to myself to just keep going, to try and keep the heart intact.

“Stop”

We started this song in early 2020 — right before the pandemic — and had a sneaking suspicion we needed to re-approach some of the record. We definitely weren’t sure we had the final statement yet, and “Stop” became that. We wanted to leave the record with big questions, and this song seemed to do everything we loved about closing songs on a record.

It leaves the book open and closes it at the same time. The second record is always a vulnerable time in the history of a band. We were all asking ourselves and each other, after all our obsessing and creating, “Is it ever going to be enough?” Feels like it is, at least for now.