The Rise Of The New Red Moons

With their determinedly stylistic, often decidedly moody, jazz-folk compositions, it comes as no surprise that the release of The New Red Moons debut album this past July would be received more as an album just discovered rather than one just released.


Blame it on the classic rock feel of the band's creative output, maybe, as being the responsible element for making something about them seem so comfortably familiar, yet managing to steer well clear of sounding like any sort of "been done" mimicry.  It's accomplished in a clearly very careful crafting - a unique and modern approach to a tried and true musical genre.  It's in this that The New Red Moons have made themselves a much talked about, and highly regarded, Milwaukee ensemble long before they had any recorded material for their growing fan base to collect.  Only such an immediately tangible group, undeniably established artists with a skill for tactful re-invention, could get away with such recognition without the aid of recorded media to establish their permanence.

The basic structure of what would eventually materialize into the full scale band that is The New Red Moons, was originally born as a solo venture for frontman Joe McIlheran (vocals, guitar). It was he and long time drummer Kavi Laud that fostered the seeds of the project, and with whom he decided the band would be fully justified as a three piece with the addition of bassist Jeff Brueggeman.

"Before The New Red Moons, I was using layers of instruments to create a more acoustic based sound that was more in line with early Coldplay or Travis," McIlheran tells, "As the trio coalesced, the limitations of one guitar and a rhythm section became the framework for a sparser sound, and the electric guitar added punctuation.  Jeff and Kavi's chemistry and tight playing added a punchiness to the existing songs, as well as the subsequent compositions."

Alongside female vocal accompaniment provided by McIlheran's wife Jamie, The New Red Moons began their steady rise into Milwaukee's music scene with much fanfare.  In 2009 the band received a WAMI nomination for best pop artist - yes, even without the aid of a full length release, and only a year after their inception!  A second nomination complimented McIlheran's vocals in 2010, with a nomination for Best Male Vocalist of the Year.  "We felt that we must have been doing something right in our live performances to warrant that kind of recognition," McIlheran recalls.  So in October of that year the band decided a proper album was well overdue.  Much like the band's intriguing lunar reference, The New Red Moons' self titled release lights up the atmosphere in a warm red glow of catchy Beatle-esque melodies and vintage classic rock refrains of which very few modern bands can pull off without sounding like they plagiarized them from their parents' record collection.

The New Red Moons album actually plays like an album should (and used to), setting a mood, holding it, and providing an ebb and flow with the kind of dangerously addictive consistency from the first track to the last that makes you feel sold short if allowed only a partial listen.  

"Where Will You Be?", from the start, comes in with an attention getting, kind of jazzy down scale intro that tells you just where you're at and what you're in for.  The melody levels out promptly, however, and McIlheran's voice floats full of all kinds of smooth and all matters of soul just above the song's horizon.  Brueggeman lays down some intuitive electric bass here that he carries through immaculately across the breadth and length of the entire record.  His bass work is so cleanly intuitive and deliberate, that even as a supporting instrument it easily allows for focused interest.

"You Can't Bring Me Down" is perhaps the band's strongest among many Beatles nods - if only interpreted by the peppy, multi-vocal chorus - but the jangling guitar work in the piece is also very reminiscent of early Rolling Stones, with an echoed out solo coming in and then right back out quickly, and with the same kind of properly rousing urgency and bravado. When did this start becoming so infrequent in rock music? The Moons remember it well, they make it scream and bleed in "A Home In Your Heart" and they let it hang and float in "Lost At Sea" - they exemplify it time and again throughout the entire collection, in fact, with an old school grace and skill that sounds as fresh, new and exciting as it ever was or could be.  Even in the sort of kitchen AM radio feel behind the band's rendition of "Stone Wall", there's a vintage authenticity there that somehow manages to sound anything but antiquated.

The New Red Moons embody a lot that seems uncertain, or even lost.  It isn't just in the reflective feel of their music; it exists too in a more literal sense in McIlheran's lyrical messages.  There's a sparse illumination about them, one that carefully shrouds the content of the songs in a shadowed atmosphere that allows any connection you make with their emotions to be made strictly by how much of what they're willing to reveal.  In the motivated and determined "Morning Train", for example, you're told something has changed - maybe in one night, or maybe over the course of many, but something's been accomplished, and the narration and rising drive of the song's harmonizing refrains lead you to empathize with whatever that might have been, without needing to really know.  "I think many of our songs create a feeling of the night, or a certain mystery," McIlheran notes.  "The band has grown into the name to some extent."

The music of The New Red Moons speaks volumes about all that's gone missing, all that's gone wrong,  and all that's been going unsung and unsaid.  You recognize them without having to, and you understand them without needing to.  They're an enigma, in a way, with how they can signal with emblazoned passion the rising of something entirely new, but still remind of everything that should have never been forgotten.

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