Every time I hear This Is The Kit, I feel like they are striving towards the most beautiful nursery rhyme ever sung to a restless child. Gently addictive melodies fall under Kate Stables’ gorgeously cooing vocals like Sister Maria harmonising those charming Von Trapp brats into a beautiful sound.
Moonshine Freeze opens with ‘Bullet Proof’, Stables’ Bristol accent somehow adding to the ‘motherly’ sound. The entire album carries that warm and comforting simplicity of folk, tinged with a sinisterly sweet edge of melancholy – it’s a sound few do better.
However, if you’re acquainted with This Is The Kit, this is familiar fare. The title track hears the band’s staples of dreamy lyrics and almost ambient guitar melodies bolstered by Aaron Dessner on horns and synths, hedging bets between changing too much and not at all. ‘Hotter Colder’ hits upon a sense of wakeful sleep, Stables’ whispers balanced by a pounding beat playing call-and-response.
Moonshine Freeze offers little in perceptible changes in the band’s music, but any such change will be sure to disturb whatever peaceful slumber it has been lulling us into over the years.
This Is The Kit offer yet another musical hug for your ears. And goddamn, isn’t that all that we’re really wanting?
Moonshine Freeze is out Friday July 7 through Rough Trade.
