Cover Art by Lizzie Curran Boody

There’s something infectiously mystic about post-punk: the wide sonic textures, the deeply emotive lyrical content, the emphasis on precise grooves balanced with hard hitting rhythm. Maybe it’s the kick-and-tom heavy drum beats that jumpstart the heart and motivate the listener to move forward, even while putting the past under the microscope. 

Based in Lyme, NH, Old Moon are picking up the post-punk baton and sprinting away with it. They’ve already hit the ground running in 2020 with a slew of releases, including March’s Eldritch, the killer A/B single “Your Arms/Heavy Air,” and a cover of “Dreams Never End” by post-punk pioneers New Order (look, it’s almost too easy to hold every post-punk band to the Joy Division/New Order comparison, but it becomes unavoidable when they get covered directly!). 

This week, they’ve come back with Past Lives, a new four track EP that finds the band pushing forward with pulsing energy while looking back on the comforts of the past. Propelled by the melodic songwriting of Tom Weir, who sprinkles in dashes of power pop and shoegaze influence, Past Lives thrives on its esoteric analysis of the past, and how we can grow beyond what we’ve experienced. 

The opening title track sets this tone, in which Weir sings about “feeling frail again” as he ponders “cityscapes washed in colors black and red, wasted away.” He reserves a special place for “the ones we love, [who] always lead us towards the night. Life can wait.” Lyrically, he continues this navigation of memory on tracks “Tyranny,” “Cycles of Guilt,” and “Exile Theme.” Even the words “guilt” and “exile” conjure up imagery of rehashing past mistakes and thinking back on those old haunts to which we can never return. 

With such a continued outpouring of creative material already released this year, it’s clear that, moving forward, Old Moon has a lot of land to explore in the territory of New England post-punk. 

Past Lives comes out on Friday, June 19th, with all proceeds going to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and National Bailout. Stream album below via bandcamp.