Pale Moon 🇮🇸 - Lemon Street (Album)

Chill. Upbeat. Riveting.

If I could describe Pale Moon’s Lemon Street in just three words, it would be those. Writing about so many albums requires me to listen to song after song (not that I’m complaining), and once you hit your 50th track of the day the danger is everything starts to sound the same, so it’s easy to get lost and just mistakenly brand the rest of the day’s songs as generic and similar-sounding. While Pale Moon is an easy band to listen to with their universally peppy vibe, I can guarantee you that this indie psych-rock duo is definitely nowhere near “generic”.

A medley of two remarkably talented people who both come from different sides of the continent, Pale Moon is made up of the husband-wife duo Árni Guðjónsson and Natalia Sushchenko - as regular readers of NMR may be aware. And Nordic music fans who have been around for a long time might take note that Árni formerly played for Of Monsters and Men and surprisingly, Pale Moon sounds nothing like them - Lemon Street just sounds like solid groovy and funky music made by indie kids. 

Though the album went out over the summer—which should have been the perfect accompaniment to your beach trip, we’re catching up on all the good music we got lined up for y’all hence we’re only reviewing Lemon Street today.

The album features 10 songs with varying subjects and topics—from Árni and Nat’s South American trip to an ‘almost country’ song about a solitary retreat through the desert. Despite the diverse range in Pale Moon’s storytelling on this album, one thing that amazes me is how they continuously give off the exact same ambiance from tracks one through ten. I particularly loved Exile because of how it got me hooked on the song’s hook (and I’m sure I speak for a lot of people here when I say this). This song seems nostalgic though I’ve never been to Cuba or Mexico or wherever it is that Árni and Nat are talking about in this song. When you listen close enough, you could hear quite a ‘churchy’ touch to it because of the choir…and the music kid in me got too excited when to hear a sea of voices on such a psychedelic band’s music. To top it all off, Pale Moon’s one-take music video for Exile was…pure chef’s kiss to what was already a genius of a song.

I’ve always adored OM&M and I’m so glad that despite the change in genre, I continue to be a fan of Pale Moon. What’s more special is that he gets to share his love for music with the love of his life, Nat. So congratulations on the album and thank you for your music, you have my entire heart leaping with laidback joy (if there is such a thing).

More about this phenomenal psych-rock duo can be found on their Instagram.

Editor notes. They also host an occasional podcast, which I've just discovered. Find it Here. Hopefully they'll do some more, they're great fun. Also apologies to regular readers for the sudden burst of positivity towards OM&M, normal service will be resumed next year.