Back in 2016 we featured Don’t Hide From the Light, the debut album from Pat Moon, the recording project of Portland resident Kate Davis. It was an intriguingly atmospheric record of what we labelled “ecclesiastical electro-pop,” describing it as “at once insular and expansive […] like a private ceremony within an abandoned church, solemn and serious and sacred […] yet instantly recognisable, a likeness of our own inner-thoughts.”
Now Pat Moon is back with a sophomore effort, Romantic Era, which sees Davis continue to craft a sound and feeling that’s all her own. Ethereal and dreamy, and very much focused towards the romance of the title, the record has touchstones as varied as Kate Bush and Cocteau Twins, as well as acts like Nancy Kells’s Spartan Jet-Plex, resulting in 10 songs of goth pop perfection.
First song ‘Moon in Aquarius’ pulses gently with soft keys and Davis’s otherworldly vocals, a synth pop song not for neon-lit cityscapes but rather forest fog and candlesmoke. As the title suggests, ‘Medieval Spells’ has a similar vibe, the Julianna Barwick-esque vocals soaring and echoing across a track as dark and spacious as the night sky.
“There is magic in our eyes
we’re more than body more than mind
life will change it always has
ancient trees burning down”
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This feeling continues across Romantic Era. Part spellbook, part hymnal, it’s an album to get lost in, to wade into and float away. ‘Spiraling’ sounds bright and weightless, twinkling keys flashing and whooshing like will-o’-the-wisps, although the lyrics about a troubled relationship cast a long shadow, while ‘Longing for the Infinite’ builds from a dramatically sombre opening, as if delivered from some dark and cavernous cloister, before neon-streaks light the whole thing up, like Elmo’s fire or biblical tongues of flame.
‘I Belong’ is a song fraught with a lifelong sense of displacement and unease, a bitter acceptance that things change and that, sometimes, change hurts. “Time is moving faster now,” Davis sings, “I thought change would lift us somehow, I feel life moving all around, and I don’t think I can settle down.” These relatable sentiments wash over like banks of fog, as if conjured from the midst of some vast ocean, and it’s hard not to attribute some greater meaning or power.
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And this is perhaps the most remarkable thing about Romantic Age. The way Pat Moon captures the essence of some very real, twenty-first century woes in a way that’s so far removed from the mundanities of day-to-day life that it feels transcendental. Therefore, the supernatural and mystical links are not so much driving forces behind the creative process, but rather the way the album frames very human problems, repositioning the ordinary as something with an almost religious level of meaning.
You can get Romantic Era now from the Pat Moon Bandcamp page.