Moonlit And Devious (studio album)
by Allie Crow Buckley

From Mercury 04/19/2021 16:01 | #268728

(My first exposure to Allie Crow Buckley, this album is a dark, moody, slow-moving, singer/songwriter album with some cool song IDEAS and also, admittedly, a few honest-to-goodness good songs throughout. BUT it also features a lot of songs that start with a good sound or premise then don't develop further. A pleasingly textured and beautiful album this mostly is, but the lack of fleshed-out songs or almost anything memorable after track 5 makes it just okay to good.)

The way this album gets started is pretty special and cool. The way the deep rattling bass notes hit on opener "Nothing Sacred" and the way this bass thump works with the laid back drumming and that tinkling piano and keyboard and of course the way Allie rides over this beast of a track with her vocals, it all works so damn well and it is both a standout and a brilliant intro to this album and (for me) this artist.

From there, the album moves on and keeps the dreary, distinct and dramatic sounds coming. The gothic organ textures of the title track are really cool. The noisy, almost post-rock, wide-open-space sound of the instrumental "Serpentress" is pretty dope and unexpected and it also really fits in the vibe and flow of the album. She also comes back to this sound on the other short instrumental here "Interlude". "Hanging Tough" features a really cool synth sound and the vocals are great and that dance beat works so well! Its certainly a standout on this album. "Hasta La Vista" works really well, with a brilliant chorus that gets stuck in my head whenever I hear it.

The whole album has a mysterious and somewhat dark and creeping attitude. The tempos are mostly slow and give room for slow, slithering melodic choices from keyboards and bass and guitar and make space for Allie's pretty, yet somehow held-back vocals. The lyricism is pretty good from what I was able to hear and catch. And the songwriting is okay, although more than I'd like I felt like songs had a great first idea and general outline but don't develop after that or those initial inspired choices. I suppose I felt like some of these admittedly cool-as-fuck sounding songs weren't fleshed out to be memorable or great. "Gold Medallion" is an example of this - where the sound and mood is so thick, yet the song doesn't go anywhere or worm its way into me like it had the potential to do. The album is a bit front-loaded, and the songs tend to underwhelm a good bit on the back half and mostly suffer from that un-fleshed-out critique I mentioned.

Overall, I think this a pretty good, dark, mysterious, singer/songwriter album. It doesn't leave much of a trace after its passed. The style and mood is cool and she is a good songwriter and vocalist, but the whole experience just doesn't quite keep me engaged.