We’ve featured the work of Brooklyn-based songwriter Christina Skramstad, AKA City Dress, several times in the past. First back in 2020 with ‘Showing Up‘, a song which examined the difficulties of aging through the lens of a close friendship, and then more recently last month with ‘Empires of Honey‘. “A rhythmic and resolute exploration of the self-deception involved in ego and boundless ambition,” as we put it. And the perfect encapsulation of Skramstad’s ability to weave tracks at once literary in style and personal in tone.
Latest single ‘Moon Landings’ is no exception to this style. Drawing on the iconic event alluded to in the title, the song sees City Dress ruminate on those moments which reverberate around the world and reorientate our relationship with our surroundings. “I wrote ‘Moon Landings’ in the early days of the pandemic after watching a show in which the characters go back in time to the night Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon,” Skramstad explains. “It made me think about transcendence, awe, and what it feels like when the world’s collective gaze is aimed in the same direction, as that was happening in real-time with Covid.”
City Dress brings this to life with a gentle acoustic soundscape, and what results is a rare celebration of positive face of humanity which showed itself during the pandemic. Where people worked together to address a problem, showing how the even largest tasks are not insurmountable if only the will and energy exists in order to tackle them.