Moon Duo- Ripley Johnson, Sanae Yamada and drummer John Jeffrey- toured in 2019 to promote their album Stars Are The Light. They played from inside the lightship, a gauze screen around the four sides of the stage, with lights and projections beamed onto it and from within it. The effect was pretty sensational, adding to the hypnotic, motorik groove the three piece locked into as soon as they started playing. There was little audience interaction, the odd 'thank you', but mainly it was constant, fluid, propulsive pysche, the drums straight ahead, four four, Sanae's keys and synths adding texture and drones, twin enervated vocals and Ripley's guitar drizzled and dappled on top. We saw them when they played The Dancehouse in Manchester at the end of October and had our minds expanded. A month later they played The Wonder Ballroom in Portland, Oregon, a gig which was filmed in full. It finishes with the two chord cover of Alan Vega's Jukebox Baby.
Two years previously they played at KEXP, the Seattle based radio station that invites bands in to play in their studio and films them doing it. This half hour set is less blissed out and less spaced out than the 2019 shows, a four song set that concludes with the mighty ten minute White Rose (also played at Portland in the gig above, about twenty minutes in).