This week we’re taking a psychedelic safari with MOOON! The Dutch psyche-heads arrive at Bickerton Records with their sophomore lp, a brilliant concept album on leaving city life behind and getting into the wilderness, a dreamlike trip to the country under the bright light of the mooon along folk-psyche pastoral chants and lysergic pop explosions.
First of all, dig that album art! What a beautiful mix of real and psychedelic imagery- this one will look great sitting next to your turntable. And if the art isn’t enough of an incentive to buy a physical copy, the vinyl is also available in 3 different colors (black, white, or olive green) so you can match it to your favorite safari attire!
Of course, there’s much more to dig here than just the aesthetics. The music itself is just great. I love that Safari is a concept album, and I think everyone can relate to the feelings of wanting to escape off to some new land at least for a while (although maybe some of you explore new lands by more psychedelic means already!).
The journey begins with “Safari (intro)”, a slow building track that sets the tone and begins the Safari narrative, inviting us to come along. The closing “Safari Outro” is a mostly instrumental track, until the music swells and the band sings “What a great trip it’s been, thank you all for joining in, and we would like to see you again” to us before really pumping up the grooviness through till the end of the record. And there’s something all warm and fuzzy about that, to listen and take the Safari journey with the band and even be thanked for coming along.
The 2 singles that came out prior to Safari’s release are probably the 2 finest tracks on the album. “All By Myself” is jangly, 60s psychpop that soars throughout its chorus and provides hooks galore. “Another State of Mind” leans more garage but still has all that pretty jangliness only Rickenbockers can provide, with fun Farfisa leads tossed in for good measure. Both tracks have fantastic music videos as well, with “the former following the boys on their safari journey on their very Monkees-esque Safari excursion, and the latter a black and white performance video featuring one very hairy gorilla on the Farfisa.
A few other real gems on the record are the sitar and birdsong laced “Nature’s Play”, and “The Sun”, which is a 5 minute psychedelic odyssey with loads of time signature changes, early Pink Floyd style spoken word narration thrown in, and some unexpected searing guitar work towards the end. But there’s really no duds in the whole bunch- Safari deserves a start to finish listen, not just to fully experience the swingin’ safari that our groovy guides takes us along for, but because it’s also just a really fantastic record start to finish. It’s available now, so go get it!
The band is currently on tour following the album’s release. You can catch them here:
Fri. Oct. 11: Paradiso, Amsterdam.
Fri. Nov. 1: Volt, Sitard.
Thu. Nov. 28: Vera, Groningen.
Sat. Nov 30: Rotown, Rotterdam.
Fri. Dec. 13: Merleyn, Nijmegen.
Sat. Dec. 14: EKKO, Utrecht.
Get Safari here: https://bickertonrecords.bandcamp.com/album/br029-safari
Follow MOOON:
@MOOON
