Pale Moon is the husband-wife duo of musicians Árni Guðjónsson and Natalia Sushchenko. The pair released their sophomore album Carpets, Cables and Sweaty Hearts, on July 19.
“Someplace warmer than here,” is the first thought that springs to mind when listening to the sunny sounds of Pale Moon. Despite the duo’s frosty home countries — Árni from Iceland and Natalia from the Siberian province of Russia — the band’s latest release evokes images of hazy summer vacations, sticky road trips and breezy beach days.
“I lured her to the dark side,” Árni jokes, recounting how the band came to be. Initially meeting each other in Barcelona during Natalia’s design studies, the pair was quick to complement each others’ creative strengths and weaknesses. Árni’s background includes music production and performance — he was an original member of Icelandic behemoth Of Monsters And Men — while Natalia’s poetry and design skills laid the foundations for the band’s lyrics and visual style. Jokingly, they refer to their early writing sessions as, “drinking red wine in the evenings and writing Elton John-esque ballads.”
Easy living
Starting work on Carpets in the immediate wake of their 2022 debut Lemon Street, Árni and Natalia gravitated back to their original meeting place in Catalonia. Travelling frequently to Barcelona, they wrote and eventually recorded their sophomore album there.
The band’s frequent, short stays in the city ended up making indelible marks on their latest album. Both Natalia and Árni find the Catalan way of living more relaxed than their day-to-day life in Iceland. Its laid-back atmosphere seeped into their influences, recording process and, finally, onto the physical recordings themselves.
“I think our music became a bit more uplifting. The Icelandic mood pushes you into more melancholic vibes,” says Natalia, quickly adding, “which is also great! I love to write the melancholic stuff.”
The carefree lyrical themes exhibited on the album are mostly attributed to Natalia. “I was trying to explore themes that aren’t too serious, because I understand that music is there to elevate people’s mood. Music is a tool to make you feel great. That’s why you should put on good music,” she explains.
“I guess I just felt that Millennials had become way too depressed,” she adds, half jokingly. “I was just tired of this. I’m like, ‘Hey people, just lighten up.’”
“Musically, we’re aiming for some kind of ’60s vibe, this kind of bubblegum pop,” says Árni. “You know, short songs that are just entertaining. We aim to entertain.” Still, he makes sure to mention that the album contains slower, sombre ballads. “We are still who we are: sad people from the North.”
Music for beaches
“When we were making our first album, we visited a beach town outside of Barcelona to work on some music. And when I finished a rough mix of a song, I would often take it down to the beach and see if the song works for that setting,” Árni chimes, spelling out Pale Moon’s songwriting goals.
In addition to the Mediterranean climate making its mark on Carpets, Pale Moon employed the help of local Catalan musicians Pol Mitjans and Oriol Brumet (of bands Azul, Brizi and Filipinyas), as well as Icelandic musicians Ari Frank Inguson (Ari Árelíus) and Hreiðar Már Árnason.
“We learnt a lot from the Catalan musicians that we played with,” Árni says. “They have a lot of really nice indie bands in Catalonia and what I like about it is that it’s quite minimalistic. It’s very neat and very clean; they don’t do anything unnecessary. Every note or every chord you play, it has to be there.”
The raw power of music
At its core, Carpets is a lush collection of brilliantly-crafted indie-pop songs. The focus single “Spaghetti” starts off as if Mac DeMarco had set up camp at the Playa de La Barceloneta, imbibing cerveza and listening to Tame Impala. The contemporary influences of psychedelic, slacker and indie-pop are prevalent on the album, while its recording process was rooted in “old-school” techniques.
In contrast to the band’s previous Lemon Street, which was exclusively made by Árni’s and Nata’s own two hands, save for the post-production, Pale Moon approached Carpets from a different perspective.
“We wanted to record the whole album in one sitting with the musicians. We wanted to have a raw feel of the music. We liked the more vintage style, whose main characteristic is the recording of the band simultaneously,” Natalia explains. “That’s where the magic happens.”
“Also, we just needed more humans,” Árni adds. “I feel like our first album was way too polished,” he continues, comparing their debut to, “watching a film where Eddie Murphy plays all the roles. It’s just weird,” he says with a laugh.
Pale Moon’s album Carpets, Cables and Sweaty Hearts is out now. The vinyl version — including four bonus tracks — drops in September. Follow Pale Moon on Instagram @palemoonband for the latest news of their upcoming EP. Check out their music videos on YouTube. They make great music videos.
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