Released six years after
Out of Love, their self-described "doom wop" debut, indie super trio
Mister Heavenly regroup with their more muscular sophomore effort,
Boxing the Moonlight. Comprised of
Ryan Kattner (
Man Man),
Nick Thorburn (
Islands,
the Unicorns), and
Joe Plummer (
the Shins,
Modest Mouse),
Mister Heavenly first arrived on the scene with a set of pop expectations which, a bit surprisingly, resulted in a dark-hued vamp on early rock and doo wop. For their follow-up, the band pulls from a more diverse sonic palette loosely centered around scrappy power pop with forays into synth pop, Krautrock, and even early-'90s hip-hop beats. Opener "Beat Down" is an early highlight with a pounding piano rock feel and smartly written lyrics swapped back and forth between vocalists
Kattner and
Thorburn. The slow-building rocker "George's Garden" is another bright spot with a propulsive feel built around a dynamically percolating synth bed. The production as a whole is uniformly bright, clean, and colorful even as the songs veer dramatically from one style to another, like the shimmering low-key synth grooves of "Crazy Love, Vol. III" that precede the blown-out fuzz of the
Monks-inspired "Dead Duck," where
Kattner offers a spazzy update of
Gary Burger's garagey dance howls. In all,
Boxing the Moonlight is a solid follow-up, offering a bit more of the variety that fans of this indie supergroup might have expected the first time around. ~ Timothy Monger