Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Moonbeams is actually a sunny road trip.  If I had an album to take on a trip through the Mid-West via automobile it would be Moonbeams; as I peered, ideally, out of the dusty windows of a “woody” station wagon.  The songs on this album are like the varied knick-knacks collected at road side curioseums.  The low-fi and eclectic quality of TMTS’s songs are akin to the loosely bound menagerie of song-filled suitcases jostling atop the roof of the “woody”.  All those knick-knacks of song have become warped, stained, and broken as a result.  This would be a true reflection of Reitherman’s lyrical content as it relays the fractured feelings of a well-worn traveler as he realizes events from Point A are not as clear cut as they appear posted at Point B.  Point B, in much credit to Moonbeams’ deep texturing, is really just purgatory.  A purgatory where sexual angst replaces the beleaguered attempts at quantifying seemingly disorienting life experiences.

As a result, there are many swinging moods translated by Reitherman’s just born vocals.  Lolita is the rattling bauble containing an ideal exposition of youthful indiscretion, albeit by a much less youthful narrator.  Yucatan Gold feels like the fruit that sat in the suitcase too long and became funky; a song about hedonistic amusement drenched in sampled ooze.  About to Walk is certainly the imperfectly immaculate Polaroid taken on route that pretty much sums up the dizzying peaks one can hit when left to explore and discover; obviously very personal to the picture taker and hardly able to be grasped by anyone else that wasn’t there.  Fortunately Moonbeams is more accessible than the personalized ideas contained within.  It’s like following Holden Caulfield.  Actually, it’s almost exactly like following Holden Caulfield.  If J.D. Salinger’s jaded creation had a voice laid to magnetic tape it might sound a lot like Scott Reitherman.

Despite all the wear and tear from the journey that catalyzes Moonbeams, it still has an undeniable energy much in the same vein as the Violent Femmes’ self-titled debut back in 1983 (“an innocent little time in alternative rock”).  Bare and base arrangements here work to elevate TMTS’s lyrical quandaries.  The tinsel beats, acoustic guitars, and occasional synths/horns create an inoculated journey that we are able to behold and puzzle at.  Well, if the act of puzzling is more taxing than you care for, surely just wonder at MOONBEAMS as it floats from your headphones through the dusty “woody” window and perches itself upon the character of life’s ever changing landscape.  That’ll do, pig.