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Moon Letters — This Dark Earth
(Bandcamp no#, 2025, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2025-06-08

This Dark Earth Cover art

After two excellent albums, Moon Letters shows no sign of slipping in quality. They continue to hone their take on what “progressive rock” means in the 21st Century, moving farther away from the sounds of the 70s without losing any of the adventurousness that defines the genre (or should, at least). Such bands as Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, and Van der Graaf Generator may be in their DNA, but the resulting blend is becoming more and more just Moon Letters. The personnel remains the founding quintet: John Allday (keyboards, trumpet, vocals), Mike Murphy (bass, vocals), Kelly Mynes (drums), Michael Trew (vocals, flute, percussion), and Dave Webb (guitar). Each of the players brings something distinctive to the band, from Trew’s unmistakable voice to Webb’s flashy guitar, which blends metal shredding, fusion sophistication, and psychedelic inventiveness. Murphy’s dextrous bass work is also prominent, bringing in touches of what he did in Everything Oscillating (along with Webb) without dominating the arrangements. Mynes provides a human touch on the drums — while he is undoubtedly a hard-hitting drummer capable of fast fills, he always serves the compositions, never overplaying. And Allday continues his growth on the keyboards, relying on both classic sounds and current technology; his technique has never been in doubt, but as the band has grown, the keys have cemented their place as both colorful background support and foil playing off the guitar. The compositions are complex and varied without losing the feel of natural products of human art, organically changing times and keys but not coming off as mechanically precise. Even the shortest song (barring the acoustic interlude “Lonely Moon”), “In the Catacombs” wanders from section to section over four and a half minutes without regard to standard song structure. The album finishes off with the side-long “Dawn of the Winterbird,” a voyage through varying moods that touches on lots of tasty sounds. Webb shines on an uncharacteristic clean tone during the central section, which also features really beautiful backing vocals and some unusual keyboard sounds. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen Moon Letters play live, including the debuts of most of this material, but the album is still a joy, revealing these compositions as truly peak-level progressive rock. They manage the trick of being grandiose without being pretentious, virtuosic without losing emotion.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Dave Webb, Michael Trew, Moon Letters

More info
http://moonletters.bandcamp.com/album/this-dark-earth

 

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