Ohio's
Walk the Moon specialize in crafting big, escapist pop songs that smartly balance sugary hooks with earnest passion. It's a combination that's hard to resist and one which they push to ever more euphoric levels on their fifth album, 2021's aptly-title
Heights. The album follows six years after the band broke through with their 2014 hit "Shut Up and Dance (off
Talking is Hard) and also marks their tenth year as a band following 2017's
What If Nothing. The album is the group's first since parting ways with longtime bassist Kevin Ray in 2020. Rather than replacing Ray, both lead singer
Nichols Petricca and instrumentalist
Eli Maiman shared bass duties throughout. Given Ray's departure and the fact that
Walk the Moon largely recorded the album while in lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic during a period of increasing global social and political turmoil, one might expect it to feel emotionally heavy or downtrodden. While there are certainly deep emotions at play on
Heights,
Walk the Moon summon a brightly optimistic mood, one which feels as connected to synthy, '80s dance rock uplift that drove their previous albums. It's also a sound which continues to set them alongside classic groups like
Genesis,
Hall & Oates, and
Tears For Fears as much as contemporary acts like
The 1975 and
Neon Trees. Cuts like "Giants," "I'm good," and the title-track "Heights" are massively hooky and effusive anthems. They often leave you with the sense that
Walk the Moon are sending out positive vibes, encouraging their listeners not to lose sight of all the good in the world and themselves. On "Giants,"
Petricca sings "Hold your breath/Another deep dive/All the way down/Keep your head/This is the part of the movie/Where we turn it all around." It's this kind of cinematic, big picture energy that
Walk the Moon excels in and which drives all of
Heights. ~ Matt Collar