Moonhearts issued some work previously with the extended name of Charlie and the Moonhearts, although, I have no idea why the band’s drummer received such billing – “Give the drummer some?”
Regardless of that, Moonhearts are another group in the seemingly endless lineage of the Dead and its ilk when they weren’t much more than a Bay Area garage band. To me, that extends through the Oh Sees and Ty Segall and into this here group. There aren’t any harmonies to speak of. And maybe this is a bit more punk oriented than the aforementioned groups, but even if it is, the Nuggets soul of it all mitigates any sort of spike wearing inclinations these guys might tote around from adolescence.
Before delving into the garage antics and whatnot, there is a surf track worked into the self titled album. Moonhearts enjoy reverb and distortion as much as anyone else from this cadre of bands as evidenced by “Deathstar Pt. 1” – the second half of the song doesn’t seem to have too much to do with this at all, but whatever. On this track, an all instrumental umpah-umpah effort, the band lunges full force into what might have been a bastardized version of whatever the Pulp Fiction theme was. Whatever the impetus for this slight detour – note that surf stuffs just predated the first wave of garage by a few years – it’s a bonus. And all that supplemental noise that kicks up half way through the song is boss. Tough stuff.
The rest of the album is pretty much what any well informed garage enthusiast would expect. The song writing isn’t tremendous – “Eat My Shorts” is proof of that as well as the fact that it’s easy to pick out which tracks were tossed in as filler. The thing is, though, the rest of the disc is on par – or surpasses – basically everything else in the genre of late.
It’s a bold statement especially with the amount of garage getting cranked out. But the first three tracks here stand up against any other opening salvo from the last decade. Ending in “Shine,” which should rightly be considered a bit namby pamby and directly linked to the band’s home state, counts as one of the softer moments on the disc while still delivering something that would sate your parents at the same time it makes some girl dance you’ve coaxed into coming back to your place.