throwing muses - moonlight concessions - fire

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Following their acclaimed ‘Sun Racket’ from 2020, a heady set filled with tough and tender tales spiked with surreal imagery. New album 'Moonlight Concessions' (out 14th March via Fire Records) is released alongside the deviously titled, ‘Moonlight Confessions’, a companion record exclusively available with Rough Trade. Out today, you can listen to brand new track 'South Coast' ahead of the album's release.

Produced by Kristin Hersh at Steve Rizzo's Stable Sound Studio in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, ‘Moonlight Concessions’ goes back to basics, a return for Throwing Muses to their esoteric off-kilter best courtesy of Kristin’s pin-sharp sketches and their suitably abrasive musical arrangements.

‘Moonlight Concessions’ is a collection of snippets from everyday life writ large - think Raymond Carver Short Cuts, overheard conversations, recounted happenings and telling one-liners, all sewed together to illustrate the times as they slowly mature, fully peppered with original Muses’ vim and vigour.

Written in the differing South Coast environs of The Gulf Of Mexico and Southern California, ‘Moonlight Concessions’ pulls from the star clusters that light both generating optimism and hope in varying degrees.

“New Orleans, the stars look greenish-blue, as it’s below sea level and swamp-lit. But on Moonlight Beach, they glow icy white. All these songs were written in these two glowy places, which helped our sonic technique find itself.”

Elsewhere xenophobes with shotguns prowl, an albatross flutters and is mistaken for a seagull and a homeless dude with a Spiderman mask raises a toast; perfect conditions for a band whose debut album from 1986 was retrospectively recognised by Pitchfork as “idiosyncratic and uncopiable”. Thankfully this glorious return to form ensures that nothing much has changed, from the DIY ethics of their early days.

“Our ‘Moonlight Concessions’ are still lighting the way. Not real spectacularly, nothing bright like a spotlight, just a glowing, helping each other home.”