One day back in May, I noticed that a group on Last.fm I had joined awhile back, called basically, I just wanted my own group…no longer had a group leader. Being initially drawn to the group by the animated Psyduck avatar (no longer animated due to suckiness on Last.fm’s part, though an homage remains), I took over the leadership position. Some time after this, Jakob Battick (1800sseamonster), the original group leader and Mt. Moon and Swollen Spring Violets frontman, re-joined the group and we chatted a bit in Shoutboxes and such on there and…my god, what taste he has in music! The Smiths, The Fall, Velvet Underground, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, The Libertines…nearly all of the bands I love are somewhere in his charts. He is also a visual artist, a fine example of his surreal work being the king strawberry pictured below, my personal favourite.

Mt. Moon (yes, named after the home of the Clefairy, from the Pokemon series) was a seven-piece band from Maine comprised of Jakob Battick and Patric Cunningham as songwriters and the instrumentalists / vocalists Ryan Higgins, Zach Brown, Michelle Dempsey, Mike Wellington, and Tim Cunningham, that existed only through the summer of 2008. Though, as their MySpace page points out, they “managed to play four shows, record our first hour-long radio session, and create an EP, a live album, and one seven-song, forty minute album”. More impressive, however, is all of the feeling and sentiment they managed to pack into their one LP, A Burial in Seven Births, which sounds like the final album of a band that had been together for years.

This album is like one big song meant to be listened to at once, so as to get the full perspective of all it’s summery, campfire-folk goodness. Opening with a track equally perfect for the credits of a film or a funeral procession, “Massive Moth, My Dreamfield” is a song expansive in it’s minimalism, consisting of vocal choruses and vintage organ/keyboard sounds, and “Ichneumon”, it’s close cousin, which introduces acoustic guitar to the mix. Next is”Only 33”, the one that jumped out at me most, with a faster pace and radio-single catchiness, and something Bright Eyes-ish about it. “Waltz” had been my initial favourite when I heard it in June, which (as much of the album does) has a masterful balance of silence and sound. “Worm to the Robin” keeps with A Burial in Seven Births’ mingling of both the introspective and progressive, “We are young / We are green / Only a few seasons have we lived / Many more are still to come”, followed by “*”, the quietest, most soft-spoken and saddest song of the bunch ending with “If I have to leave this place / One last time / Without saying goodbye / I might just die…”. “She Hears What She Cannot See” (a lost Beatles track title?) is a beautiful album closer, with instrumentation at first reminiscent of the hazier, slower-paced side of shoegaze, then whirling into an unexpected kaleidoscope of sound at 3:57, and burning out into haunting vocal harmony at the end.

Though it may be Mt. Moon’s last collective effort, it never strikes me as depressing or dark, due to the strong, uplifting spirit carrying it through, and it definitely is the most moving, genuine album I’ve heard this year by far. I’ll be quite interested to hear what’s next for the band members should they continue on in musical endeavors in the future, including Jakob as he returns to Swollen Spring Violets. Normally, A Burial in Seven Births might come as too tricky of a monument to climb over and surpass, but what other than great things could you expect from someone who lists “Mark E. Smiths’ face” as an influence?

Download A Burial in Seven Births - Mt. Moon
Mt. Moon on MySpace Music
Swollen Spring Violets on MySpace Music