Emerging from the musical scene over 30 years ago, Columbus, Ohio indie rock act Moviola has returned with "Earthbound," their 11th album, titled track, and first release with Dromedary Records in Kingston, NY. For a group that has spent a decade defying the distinction between folk rock, indie, and Americana, "Earthbound" is a homecoming and a song suite that bears the weight of experience while bristling with new risk and fresh immediacy.
Recorded throughout Columbus, Brooklyn, and Brattleboro, VT, this is one that is unafraid of owning its own voice. There's an uncommon cohesiveness here, with five individual contributors blending into one expression that's inarguably Moviola. From soft and lush to coarse and ragged, it's a track full of multitudes, never at rest with any easy answers. It's the sound of a band at ease with contradiction, grounded in earth but always suggesting something expansively interstellar.
The songwriting is striking in itself, with the members' added contributions forming a mosaic of vision that is both personal and universal. Songs ripple with world-weariness but pulse with urgency, juxtaposing contemplation and energy. "Earthbound" dishes, unapologetically, the music that feels like a conversation with old friends who've experienced plenty and are still in need of being heard. "Earthbound" is an extension of a fearless band that is not afraid to stay complex, to let disparate influences coexist, and to create music that is profoundly personal and expansively human. Moviola has come back hard, feet on the ground yet grasping at the stars.
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