Twin Moons, the Crude Molosser

 

I have a number of reasons to dislike this. I will explain them and you know how the format goes I will finish by gushing with praise. Fuck me, 2023 is turning into a good year, already I have THREE songs that in normal years would be fighting to be my song of the year. 

Molosser I have liked before. I think one of the first reviews I did after I gave up on photocopying my fanzine and trying to sell it in venues and I went to the world of the internet, was Molosser. I have been clinically dead twice since then. Possibly it happened. It was early. I loved the tenderness and the violence of their music. Seductive and dangerous. It is easy to drop pairs of words together in English and make yourself sound clever. Artful and innocent. Tuneful and dissonant. They were all those things. I also remember saying that I wanted to hear a whole new album exploring their ideas and their direction. So I have a reason to dislike Molosser Crude, because this is precisely the band not following through in the way that I, the listener demanded.

But that is what real artists do. Fuck me, my opinion is worth nothing.

I have another reason. I dislike cliches. I dislike repeating things that have gone before that were mightier, fuller, more novel, more inspired. Music is not like carpentry. We do not simply get better at it with every year. Music leaps. It reboots. It reignites. Could Molosser Crude be a cliche? Well we have beautifully detuned guitars, doing the work of three instruments in one. We have beat-perfect drumming that relives so many of the very best grunge moments of the last 15 years. We have vocals that burn and soar. Haven't we heard this before? Isn't this just a two-person version of many bands that walked the same pavement?

I don't think it is. There may be elements of homage. Of love for a form. But this is original.

The songwriting, the story, the interplay are still there in Molosser Crude. They are repackaged in a form that is probably more instant and approachable in a highly competitive space. Perhaps people that hear this will wonder and will come to adore the subtlety of their acoustic work. But that does not matter because this song is absolutely brilliant on every level by itself. 

If I think of this band as a new band I have never heard before, I love this.

That is enough. Molosser Crude owe us nothing. They have made a song that is beautifully structured, sounds incredible, bursts with humanity, captures the imagination and is infused with tradition in a genre without being a slave to it.

Bravo.