Dylan Moon

CAT #: RVNGNL70
October 23, 2020

Dylan Moon returns with Oh No Oh No Oh No, a mesmerizing, mellow follow up to 2019’s Only the Blues. Despite the title’s negation in triplicate, these four songs are bursting with creativity and positivity, offering a blueprint for memorable song construction. Oh No shifts shapes just as often as its album predecessor, but shows Moon’s growth as an arranger and producer. There is more packed into this EP than its ten minutes might have you believe.

Oh No Oh No Oh No was recorded in various bedrooms Moon was subletting around LA after settling back on the west coast at the end of 2018. Each song moves through multiple modes and moods, Moon’s voice floating above these permutations like a feather in the wind, settling softly in a lyrical bed storying a drive along Crescent Heights Blvd, a new love, and the local DIY scene. While the thick tone and steady strum of Moon’s guitar from Only the Blues remain anchors on Oh No, he veers into new forms, electronic informalities, and better futures.

For “Oh No,” Moon programs an E-MU Mo Phatt drum machine to goose along the track’s broken folk melodies, not falling far from the slouching ’90s slacker rock tree. Moon plays every instrument on Oh No, and “Loafer” combines its baker’s ingredients into a perfect, pop whole. The oaken knocking of the ancient Wurlitzer drum machine used on Only the Blues returns for “Interlude,” while “The Scene” sets a Fairlight CMI against milky guitar puckering and Syd Barrett phrase turning.

Ostensibly a folk record, Oh No Oh No Oh No is equally the work of a soundscape artist who knows that every song contains within it a hundred other melodies that could have been. He twists and turns his way through these four songs determined to tease out as many as can in the time he has. Everything he finds sounds right. In the end, there was nothing to worry about.