Writing back in February, we described the premise behind The Light-Up Waltz, the new full-length album by Minor Moon on Ruination Record Co. “The title refers to a fictional band who tour the bleak landscape at the end of the world,” we explained, with single ‘Under Beyond’ painting “the act in a mythic light as a wider comment on the strange magic of being on tour.” Think Mad Max meets Station Eleven. Lead Sam Cantor is joined by Jason Ashworth (bass), Max Subar (pedal steel), Sam Subar (drum kit, percussion), Chet Zenor (electric guitar) and Sima Cunningham (organ), and together Minor Moon harness this energy to explore the ways in which we might negotiate the dismal present. If catastrophe seems constant and worsening, then how do we continue to live?
Latest single ‘I Could See It Coming’ pulls the audience into the heart of the album’s speculative world, where civilisation has collapsed and the characters are made to exist in the aftermath. But far from some desolate landscape of grim suffering, this post-civilisation society is one coloured by the invention and playfulness of its inhabitants. As though steely determination can only be maintained with a suitable accompaniment of joy. “This song—and this whole record, really—is about someone attempting to make a meaningful life in a treacherous, broken world that won’t stop shifting and unfolding,” Cantor explains. “To me, the antidote to fatalistic disillusionment is a kind of complicated dance with dread, hope and joy.”
