Video: Moaning, ‘Ego’

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Moaning (Photo by Michael Schmelling)

Dating back to their noisy days in L.A.’s DIY scene, post-punk trio Moaning has always brought plenty of conceptual heft to their sonic chaos. Their new single “Ego” is a brain full.

The band — singer-guitarist Sean Solomon, bassist-keyboardist Pascal Stevenson and drummer Andrew MacKelvie, announced today that their second album, “Uneasy Laughter,” will arrive March 20 via Sub Pop. It’s the follow-up to their gritty self-titled debut, released in 2018, and it’s different.

Working again with producer Alex Newport, the trio shelves their abrasive guitars in favor of ’80s-styled synths, at least on the deliciously dark new single. It’s a little bit like Peter Murphy or Interpol singing over Gary Numan’s (“Pleasure Principle”-era) synths. “Musically, the song was started by repurposing a drum beat made for a different demo and putting it on top of a new synth loop,” Stevenson says. “It was a digital collage where we passed Ableton files back and forth. We purposely avoided the impulse to add guitars to everything, letting the melodies of the synth and vocals be the focus. We wanted to embrace the song’s ability to slip between genre lines.”

Ambar Navarro (Soccer Mommy, Oberhoffer, Anna Burch) directs the video for the song, which Solomon says is “about letting go of your own bullshit to help other people. Wanting to love yourself to love others. The ego can make you feel like you’re the greatest person in the world or the worst. It makes you think your problems are abnormally different which is isolating and rarely true. The song is a reminder that listening to other perspectives is important and beneficial to both parties involved.”

||| Watch: The video for “Ego”

||| Previously: “Misheard,” 2018 interview, live at the Teragram Ballroom, “Don’t Go”