With their debut album of 2012, Dark Eyes, the Montreal based four-piece were very much of the time, all quirky, off-kilter melodies and song structures, and tonnes of percussion, and vocal harmonies a la Fleet Foxes, within a generally stripped back and brooding atmosphere, Radiohead also figuring prominently. In particular though, the brilliantly propulsive Call Me in the Afternoon gained some national exposure, and their performance at 2013's Great Escape was cited by many as a highlight.

Its been three and a half years since they released that debut, and the talk was that all had not been happy within the Half Moon Run camp, a bunch of people who had come together more by accident than by design, who had found themselves touring constantly, around the globe, to the point of exhaustion. After struggling with finding a sound and direction for the second album, the band decamped to California for a spot of surfing and easy living in order to find their musical mojo, and it seems to have helped. The Sun Leads Me On is a decidedly more eclectic, cosmopolitan affair, that whilst retaining elements of the aforementioned Fleet Foxes and Radiohead within the mix, is by and large a more diversely upbeat potpourri of west coast vibes, country and folk favours, even a little bit of disco and so-called 'heartland rock'. Furthermore, they get their fluid guitars out more and largely ditch the percussive elements that was a feature of their debut.

Bookended by the languid Lennonesque Warmest Regards and the Hot Chip style beats and synths of Trust, there are plenty of other signposts in-between, by a band who borrow here and there from the sounds and styles of music from the 60s to the present. For instance album highlight, I Can't Figure Out What's Going On has the stamp of both Gaz Coombes (vocally and structurally, via his recent solo album, Matador) and Midlake, while the motorik rhythm that inhabits part of Consider Yourself parrots, weirdly enough, Spandau Ballet's To Cut A Long Story Short, via a metronomic synth melody, while Coombes and a more thrashy indie sound is re-visited again for the chorus. Moreover, The Maccabees jittery indie is recalled on Turn Your Love, already a hit in their native Canada.

But despite these minor appropriations, Half Moon Run have largely carved out a classic yet distinctive sound; melody and song arrangements the appealing features, their music full of memorable lines, whether it's on the faintly saccharine Hands in the Garden (""I never thought I could be so happy") or the harder hitting Turn Your Love. The band have a heightened intuition for what works, despite the unpredictable direction of many of the songs. Just as importantly they also have a knack for song dynamics, almost everything here flowing nicely despite the constant change of speeds, gears and volumes. It's noticeable that the choruses almost invariably lift the song, acting as the peg around which the music swings. Sometimes, it doesn't work so well, such as the incongruous appendage to Turn Your Love, a short and back in the mix jazzy workout, while the band do veer towards the bland on occasion, particularly on the title track, a song that also lacks their usual bright melodic nous, and on Everybody Wants: 'Everyone wants to be someone else, everyone needs to be somewhere else. To fit right in, to be ordinary, but not the same'. Everybody Wants encapsulates the album's unsurprising mini-themes – given their lives of being partially rootless touring musicians – of identity and direction:  It's also here that Half Moon Run's ordinary spirituality can get a little too close to Mumford's territory for comfort, although theirs seem to be an honest and purposeful quest, for self-discovery, and trust amongst each other and with others.

Much like the opening few tracks of Sun Leads Me On, the closing three tracks showcase the band's new found diversity and eclecticism, starting with the upbeat finger-picking, tight harmonies and harmonica-packed country flavours of Devil May Care, followed by The Debt, a terrifically atmospheric track. Like Devil May Care it appears, on first listen, somewhat out of kilter with the rest of the album, as the pace drops to a barely perceptible beat, with synths, bass and minimalist drums conjuring up a beautiful dusky haze, the song building up to a truly majestic and spine-tingling Radioheadesque bombast, guitars distorted and heated, before sliding back into the song's original setting.

And then to complete this extraordinary diverse trio of song is Trust, their most danceable song yet, albeit a angsty tale of love and lust, with subtle suggestions of a more troubled relationship than say The Beatles, Something… which appears to be parodied here. Here, as elsewhere, the band avoid over-complication, and experimentation for its own sake, in constructing some songs that are superior and fluid pop rock nuggets of an often sublime nature.

Rewind to the beginning and Warmest Regards:”I wait and I wait to make a new start, a new beginning, but it feels like the end", sings Devon Portielje. It's not the end, but a new beginning for one of the most inventive and melodic pop rock bands out there.

Jeff Hemmings

Website:  halfmoonrun.com
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