Short Reviews [Moon Goose - 2022 - "La Nuit"]

I think the best way to describe the album is by giving the opening lines to the band themselves who say, “this LP features 8 tracks of musical weirdness and we have tried really hard to channel the goose in each one of us and let them express their feelings.” So there you have it, they are channelling their inner goose, which is why we hear from Dougal the sex bot who says most of the time they just stand around in the kitchen, presumably while trying to make sense of the music. These instrumentals show a band who have been heavily influenced by psychedelia, krautrock (especially Can) and space rock (especially Hawkwind). They then roll this up in a collection which rarely settles, so much so that one never knows quite where the music is going to lead. In many ways it is a case of looking deeply into what is going on, and the clue to having to do this is in the cover art itself where the woman in the bath is clearly visible but look more closely and one can see a very small figure swimming alongside. We get fuzzed and distorted guitars, nice strident bass, powering rhythm section, strident organ, and often plenty of space in a delicately produced album which allows each instrument to breathe and be natural without compressing anything or throwing in loads of effects. There is a very clear feeling to the overall sound, even when everything is being turned up, a clarity of melody and thought which takes us back to the late Sixties and just into the Seventies with yet another release from Fruits de Mer which deserves to be played on vinyl as this was how the album was conceived, with four tracks on each side providing a perfect musical arc. Superb.