Written by: Dave Cantrell

How often do we say ‘holy shit!’ to ourselves, in the way, that is, that signals amazement and not its multiple opposites? Our guess is ‘not enough.’ It is, by now, a salty, cracked truism that the internet, with its colossal and constant firehose flow of zone-flooding shite, has made us all to one degree or another a bunch of jaded fucks, to the point perhaps that even those moments that seem to bring us what we once would have considered unalloyed joy are tinged with a lurking shadow of cynicism however (if we’re lucky) faint. To some extent, of course, it has been forever thus – it’s not like the Greeks and, I dunno, the Sumerians weren’t steeped in this most fatalistic of ironies – but those of us ‘blessed’ to be living in the digital age, as much as we’d never opt to deny ourselves the incomparable benefits that arguably attend, have been ushered into an era of the capital “I” ironic that even the bleakest capital “S” skeptic might never have imagined. Against this backdrop there is therefore an increasingly essential, imperative even, need to experience epiphany-like moments to cancel out all that soul-snuffing noise. That those opportunities quite-if-not-most-often arrive in that divinely organized form of noise called music is, yes, irony atop irony but far more important, whatever conundrum-like puzzles aside, it’s also one of – if not the – most easily-accessed saving graces available to us and as proof positive we offer you the latest “Holy shit!”-worthy full-length from Philly-based three-piece Luna Honey. Called Bound and self-released November 22nd and whereas it is at this point in your standard, Criticism 101 review that a quick history is slipped into the narrative, that ain’t happenin’ this time, as the work right here at hand – rather unceremoniously, it should be said – demands a curt ‘fuck that, get to the goods’ and we can naught but agree (and besides, what’s the internet for anyway?)

Launching the album with some archly contained feedback before swiftly shifting into a driving, propulsive beast of a mutha The Birthday Party is kicking its legacy in the ass for not having thought of, “Kerosene” blows right past any and all niceties (aside of course the flourish of hook and melody) and pulls one in to the LH maelstrom with such presence you simply have no choice, you’re held henceforth agog in abeyance until track ten “Shore” leaves you off in a state of fog and electricity whereupon you hit ‘play’ again because how can you fucking not. Between those two electric poles lies a piece of work birthed, it would seem, by parents named Mayhem and Beauty.

Now, you may, at this point, interpret the ‘M’ half of that off-the-cuff approximation of the Luna Honey dynamic as implying carnage and disarray, ‘violence for the sake of’ but that would be a far too hasty – not to mention criminally inaccurate – assumption. No, we’re in expert hands here (those hands belonging to Maura Pond vox and guitar, Benjamin Schurr guitar and Levi Flack bass with a bit of organizational deviance as any given piece requires), led toward and inspired by a consistency of both these songs’ structures and the studio nous that takes the (already) finely-constructed tracks and elevates them beyond any reasonable listener’s pre-established expectations.

Past that explosive epiphany of an opening track comes the fascinatingly lugubrious “Vacuum Cleaner” that suggests in sound and tone a Bela Lugosi fever dream as he Hoovers over his Carpathian carpets, Pond in a – nearly operatic – state of ekstasis, imagine Diamanda Galas reaching a level beyond their already otherworldly capabilities and you’re almost there and oh that we were exaggerating but there’s no room nor time for that here, not when you consider the likes of…

…the nimble, somewhat dark funk punk-rocking “Barbie Cake” that manages a wickedly blended merger of the ‘playful’ and the ‘mildly disturbing’ and you can’t not love that; the lengthy, captivating, never-not-engaging title track that builds like the Swans heading for a hypnotist’s celebration of their own last rites that’s as feral and fulfilling (not to mention a touch hallucinatory) as that sounds; the luminous witchcraftery of “Snarge,” its thrice-repeated “can you see the way their bodies move?” likely to hang in this listener’s consciousness until it fades to black; the swirling haunting mesmerics of “Gravity” that seem to internalize that above-mentioned otherworldly to a degree where one imagines how the strangeness off this fleeting floating life can become entwined in one’s DNA, clinging to the subconscious like the ivy of all things unspoken; the brief, penultimate “Hriddel” that hovers somewhere in the shimmer between consciousness and dream, that cloak of hovering reverb we all do our best to shun just so we can function brought to the fore, ignore it no more, the track’s last line “where have you been looking?” as much indicctment as invitation and, yes indeed, the many subtexts you’ll find in this album that shadowishly illuminate the anomalous spiritual paradox we’re all locked into could not be more plainly yet artfully implied not just in that line there but can generously be found pretty much everywhere along this album’s near-one hour running length.

To be succinct, you will be blown away by this record, this band, an assurance that knows very few precedents in its guarantee-ability throughout the SEM archives and likely beyond. Breaking new ground in the heretofore groundbreaking, sublime in both scope and intent, Bound is a necessity for the times we’re in, for the times yet to come.