The Luna Moth Expose The Soul Of Post Rock On ‘Common Denominator of the Universe’

The Luna Moth craft expansive post-rock music that at its core, proves beautiful. Their music wears its soul on its sleeve, so to speak, weaving through emotional melodies that beg for the listener to pause and listen to them. They inject the listener with calm, allowing them to shape their own experience inside the broad spaces carefully sculpted by the expansive music. While the songs on the band’s 2018 release Common Denominator of the Universe are minimalist, playing with just how carefully constructed a song can really be, they’ve got an organic quality that calls to mind some breathtaking natural phenomena. It’s as if the endless waves lapping at the shore of beaches around the world have been turned to song. Yes, the sound continues, and most often, it’s gentle and can fade into the background, but in that, there’s a peace, a liberation, and a catharsis.

The Luna Moth feel, honestly, like they’ve circled back around to the soul of what made post-rock distinct and meaningful in the first place. Their tracks easily expand beyond familiar lengths, wrapping themselves around the listener like a warm blanket on a cold night. There’s no loss of substance in the huge nature of their work. The band marches right into the paradigm in front of them, it feels, and their music turns out all the more effective for it. They sound unafraid to go “there” – which in this place, constitutes a place of somehow exhilarating sonic abandon. Up here, where the band places you, there’s a sense of being “on top of the world” – or at least looking over it from a cliff vantage point high above. There’s a clarity and serenity that emerge from the work, drawing the listener back to their center in the midst of the ever circling melody.

The Luna Moth took on a huge task in crafting music that’s so massive and so ambitiously experimental, and they pulled it off incredibly well. Common Denominator of the Universe feels like a model of artistic freedom and poignancy.

5/5 Stars

Check out the band on Facebook, and listen below via Bandcamp.