Blood Moon
Spunk
M Craft was born in Canberra and resided in London during his time, that has seen him equally at home writing songs about bus routes in Sydney or bike rides through Hackney. The inspiration for his third album Blood Moon comes from a period where Craft was living in a cabin on the edge of the Mojave desert as he swapped city noise for quiet isolation.
Armed with several hour long improvised piano pieces that he had recorded in a Los Angeles recording studio, Craft sculpted these bigger pieces into an album full of songs that are bite-size morsels of loneliness. Chemical Trails starts off in a delicate and wounded state before minimalist percussion and orchestration add an intensity that recalls Art Of Fighting’s finest hour.
Craft shows his pop credentials when pushing his vocals to the fore during Love Is The Devil. This down beat suffering of the heart is the albums centrepiece as Craft vows to tentatively put one foot in front of the other. It is the sparseness of Blood Moon that draws the listener in to Craft’s subtle tunes. It is an album that screams out for the listener to consume a bottle of red.
Blood Moon is one of the better records borne out of cabin fever since Justin Vernon froze his arse off in 2007.
***1/2
CHRIS HAVERCROFT
