Dream pop duo Moon Panda have released their eagerly anticipated sophomore album Sing Spaceship, Sing!, out now. Stream here.
Along with the album release, Moon Panda have shared their whimsical new music video for ‘SummerBrain’, which they say documents “keeping the good thoughts rolling through hard times. Crying on the outside while summer plays like an old movie in your mind.”
Following on from the soothing insularity of their 2022 lockdown-influenced debut What On Earth, which saw support from the likes of Lauren Laverne, MOJO, The Independent, Loud & Quiet and The Line of Best Fit, Moon Panda’s new record Sing Spaceship, Sing! seeks comfort in the joy and human connection the world experienced post pandemic, oozing an infectious energy that strikes harder with each listen.
As society emerged once more, Moon Panda wanted to reflect that transition in their lives – both personal and creative. Guitarist Gustav Moltke and bassist/vocalist Maddy Myers headed to the warm sands of San Diego to write their second record: an album that would be full of life and human interaction, with their live drummer Josh Cabitac and keyboard player George Godwin also stepping up their roles and joining the writing process from the start.
The pair pitched up a stone’s throw from the beach, in an old ‘60s house with “this really psychedelic vibe to it”. “Every day, we’d just get up and jam, make music, have smoothies. The weather was so sunny, it really felt like we’d walked into another dimension,” Maddy recalls. Having configured a studio in the house, where George and Josh would come and stay for regular stints, they ditched the idea of deadlines in favour of just letting things happen when they happened.
Throughout the album, they prioritised the groove of the songs. Having recently become obsessed with J Dilla, the band would spend hours working on rhythms that honed in on a sense of “push and pull”; as such, ‘Currents’ glimmers along on an almost trip-hop beat, while ‘Hummingbird’ emerged from a jam session before evolving into its laid-back, low-slung final form. On ‘Starfruit’ (which upon released secured a space on BBC 6Music’s playlist), there’s a sense of sweetness and spaciousness that eventually inspired its title (“There’s just something about that word where you feel like you’re charging through the atmosphere,” Maddy says), while ‘SummerBrain’’s woozy carefree-ness is the perfect soundtrack heading into the sunny season. “The idea is that, even if you’re going through a hard time or a depression, you’ve got your summer brain on and you’re just gonna find something good,” she explains.
And really, that’s the crux of ‘Sing Spaceship, Sing!’ as a whole entity. As glass-half-full as its joyful title might suggest, it’s a record born from hazy, blissed-out times and designed to help evoke the same feeling. “It’s an album you can daydream to,” says Gustav, as Maddy concludes: “I hope it’s an album that you could turn to if you’re feeling a little down; I hope it’s something that makes you take in how you’re feeling and just exhale it out.”
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