Hudson Bell - When the Sun is the Moon
“Slow Burn”, the first track on Hudson Bell’s sophomore release When the Sun is the Moon, begins with a sort of natural sonic emanation that one would expect from the p- and s-waves of an earthquake, quietly rippling through the hillside until the guitarist hits the fuzz pedal and it’s taken straight on into shoegazing territory. Bell’s vocals crow with a timbre reminiscent of those of Issac Brock on “Trailer Trash”, and the singer’s questionably-tuned guitar only furthers the album’s comparison to the earlier work of Modest Mouse and Built to Spill.
The most notable track on the album is “Atlantis Nights”, an uptempo shuffle with meandering guitar fills and the chorus asking “Atlantis, how did it come to this?”. Asking these sort of questions about the apocalypse of a mythological society is exactly what makes Bell and his cohorts so unnaturally charming: while seemingly eccentric, Bell’s goal is not to alienate the listener, though this is not to say that the songs are immediately accessible. “Sea Horse,” a longer track on the album, sounds like yet another ‘acoustic rumination on existential matters’, so subtly grows and grows in volume and sheer size that it turns into a long groove like Songs:Ohia’s “Farewell Transmission”, if less country and solemn.