Moaning
Uneasy Laughter
Release Date: Mar 20, 2020
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, New Wave/Post-Punk Revival
Record label: Sub Pop
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Album Review: Uneasy Laughter by Moaning
Very Good, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 7/10
Moaning offer grownup dream pop on their sophomore release, Uneasy Laughter. With its often bright, and chill nature, the album is a fitting soundtrack for the transition from spring into summer. It saunters by delicately, evoking floral scents and pastel colours. While the band lashed out via angular riffs on their debut, seamless synths now set the mood. Fitful builds-to-bursts are replaced with palatable pop interludes — the result of opting for a bass- and synth-driven sound. The result is a level soundscape with fewer twists and peaks, but a dreamy '80s vibe, complete with heady subject matter against an upbeat backdrop, like on the lead single "Ego," where dreary meets glimmer..
Based on rating 7/10
Moaning's self-titled 2018 debut was an astonishingly focused set of noisy post-punk songs filled with scathingly bitter lyrics that attempted to uncover the problems behind faulty relationships. On the band's second album, they retain the same lyrical concerns, but they completely revamp their sound, replacing the sheets of guitars with synthesizers and electronic loops. Not that guitars have entirely left the picture, as every song contains them in some form or another, but there's a much wider range of tones on display here.
Based on rating 3/5
Moaning's 2018 self-titled debut album made impressive use of lush, overdriven, My Bloody Valentine-esque guitars. The band have rowed back on that tendency on this second effort 'Uneasy Laughter', but with debatable results. They attribute their decision partly to frontman Sean Solomon's newfound sobriety, and reading about the limitations of masculinity while the album was being written.
Opinion: Very Good
"I've been sober for a year today," Sean Solomon, Moaning's frontman, wrote on Instagram last year. "I am finally finding happiness." Solomon's new-found perspective on life is at the heart of 'Uneasy Laughter', the band's second album on Sub Pop, which marks a stylistic shift away from the nihilistic post-punk of their debut towards introspective new wave. While their debut grappled with muddled matters of the heart without ever reaching a conclusion, here Solomon puts his moral compass to the test.
'Uneasy Laughter'
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