The Lower Aetna's new song, "Blood Moon," feels like wandering through the dimly lit hallways of memory where nostalgia, longing, and dread intertwine. Taken from Idle Theory, the band's much-anticipated debut album, Waiting For God To Turn On The Lights, the track is a striking distillation of the band's signature sound, a post-modern musical collision of alt-country, folk, and classic rock with an intimate, skeletal edge that haunts long after the final note subsides.
The Lower Aetna is the project of Dylan Gallimore, a songwriter who draws visceral inspiration from his life growing up, especially his teenage years working on a farm, into a song that is both introspectively rooted and universally relatable. "Blood Moon" is full of melancholic beauty, a moody alt-country soundscape that casts a hypnotic spell. DIY recording has made "Blood Moon" hushed intensity much more atmospheric, and its sumptuous harmonies and meticulous instrumentation make it unvarnished and raw.
What is compelling about "Blood Moon" is using sense memory to create a powerful feeling of place. It's a song that makes more than a story. It immerses you in a place where the visceral burden of loneliness meets the quiet yield of contemplation. Gallimore's lyricism digs, creating scenes that feel both cinematic and painfully lived-in, and the steady, aching pulse of the song reflects the slow churn of memory and time.
As the single progresses, the arrangement swells organically, as if "Blood Moon" was breathing, moving between whispered contemplation and rising intensity. The guitar work is rich but restrained, supporting Gallimore's evocative lead vocals with a warmth that feels both familiar and haunting. There's a timelessness to "Blood Moon," a quality that aligns with the work of artists like Wilco or Jason Isbell, songwriters who excel at transmuting personal reckonings into something that touches on the universal.
"Blood Moon" is a moment of catharsis, a meditation on the fissures of the modern world refracted through the prism of personal experience. In the bigger picture of Waiting For God To Turn On The Lights, the song finds a striking fulcrum for the overall effect of the record and how it perfectly channels modern anxieties and existential searching.
For anyone who finds shelter in music that inhabits the silent crevices between past and future, between yearning and acceptance, "Blood Moon" is essential listening. The Lower Aetna has done something truly special here. It is an evocative, slow-burning masterpiece that is as much a testament to music's ability to wound and heal.