Ava Luna has always moved fast and with an independent beat, but Moon 2 is the band’s most effective and possibly best album. He talks about 2015’s clash-clang Infinite House, 2014’s bluesy needy Electric Balloon, and several years of changing roles in the band. Carlos Hernandez left his leadership position; there are also his commanding shouts on the break. Felicia Douglass is in a new job, handling slippery percussion and samples, as well as synthesizer and vocals; Julian Fader has found a great spot on synthesizers in addition to drums. And Rebecca Kaufman wrote her first song for the band, the otherworldly “On Its Side the Fallen Fire”, which echoes Laurie Anderson’s state of restrained majesty.
The band’s sixth album, Moon 2, could be a sound map of the moon if there were a moon on Earth that was colder than the one we have now. The Brooklyn-based band delves into its namesake to provide a tour of the tumultuous, boisterous, noisy landscape of this planetary body. It’s teasing electro-funk that plays on a gravitational plane where everything has a different weight, sounds melt deeper and float more easily.
Moon 2 is almost an invitation. The band meets us at a distance, as if they were giving us a visa to study abroad. There are glimpses of joyful everyday errands in the sideways bounce of “Deli Run”. The pace is unexpected, sometimes feeling like you’re rushing down a difficult highway, like in “Walking With an Enemy,” where you hear alien purrs from imaginary fauna and an extraterrestrial stream of eerie whistles. You hear snippets of noisy parties from apartment windows, gossip on the sidewalks, car windows, the roar of your own engine, the screech of a terrible run-in. The title song crystallizes the stomach-churning emotional fracture that happens when you stumble upon a dangerous crush. The sluggish reggae bassline encourages you to swing your torso straight home, the Kraftwerk synth sympathizing with your alarm clock and panicked excuse: “Come back, I left the oven on.”
On Moon 2, eeriness reigns supreme. The mood swings, mercury rhythms, and optional melody don’t let you sit still for long. Even though they sneak in quickly, the sounds are full and realized; you have the feeling that you’re just moving through a world that exists without you. Conversations interrupt each other and fade in and out Doppler-style: Kaufman’s cavernous, clear voice runs over Douglas’s elastic velvet in harmony, and Hernandez revels in his deep, almost militaristic authority. Sometimes, as in “Centerline,” the band is clearly interested in position and perspective, and where everyone stands. One person is having a hard time coming back to reality (“After our luxurious vacation/Starting from the minibar/I can get you back, I mean it”), while the other is slowly thinking about the fact that it is impossible to know each other (“Defrost the iceberg, you will see/Your original reflection is looking at me”).
The test sample for this album was a warped tape of a 90s female band that sang neo-pagan ritual songs that Kaufman found at a rummage sale. This feeling of the band is infused into Moon 2. The band wrote and recorded the album during two cold-weather trips to Vermont and during a blizzard on the Massachusetts coast. They set up a studio in the basement and ventured down alone or in small groups to work on what people had left behind. It was written by picking up what others had put aside.
Ava Luna is seduced by group dynamics and interactive creativity as a theme: who goes to the grocery store, who sits, who quits, who pays up front, who promises. They have never shied away from combining independent sounds. In Moon 2, they captured this utopian kind of jostling, where two people bumping into each other makes a lot of noise, and around every corner there’s a productive coincidence. They mix like the best neighborhoods, in the busiest cities, in more exciting, alternative moons.