EML Recordings
Released: January 18 2010
No Sign of Morning’ is the album Pet Shop Boys might have made if they had decided to pursue a trip hop direction in the mid-90s. Imagine the icy synthetic strings and smoky breakbeats of Protection-era Massive Attack topped by Neil Tennant’s detached reedy croon and you’re well on your way to grasping Moonshot’s sound.
No Sign of Morning is a self-consciously dark and portentous work, mixing ominous synth oscillations and deep bass reverberations with morose and paranoid lyrics. The latter works well when painting ambiguous scenes of dread and emotional turmoil, as on the opening title track, which seems to concern curdled domestic bliss, and on the glacial soul of ‘Purple Lipstick Mark’, which describe a classic PSB world of ennui in hip clubs and sinful encounters on drizzly London streets. Things go less well when Moonshot try to make state-of-the-nation statements. ‘Who Turned the Lights Out?’ aims to tackle Britain’s power supply woes with laboured, finger-wagging agitprop lyrics that barely fit the music. Its unappealing soapbox sermonising is ameliorated somewhat by guest singer Clare Portman who provides seductive backup vocals. She should have been given lead. Certainly, PSB would never have made such an artless statement. ‘This is England’ is little better, apparently taking music hall’n’mine-era 60s Bowie as its reference point.
Moonshot do a lot better when they let the music create the atmosphere. ‘Midnight in Dover’ is shuffling late-80s house shot through with a fearful chill which conveys a sense of nocturnal dread far more clearly than the images of burnt-out cars and encroaching mist. Throughout, the music draws from a palette of 90s trip hop sounds and beats, but always wiped clean of its street origins. The music on No Sign of Morning is frozen, antiseptic and very, very white. Nevertheless, it’s refreshing to here a 21st century electronic duo which isn’t trying to sound like a 1982 edition of Top of the Pops.
Posted In Album Reviews, Jan 15 2010.
Words - Richard