With a Major Label Deal in the Rearview, L.A.’s Lo Moon Is Relishing Its Newfound Independence ‘And Having Way More Fun’
variety.comLily Moayeri There was an air of unwanted mystery surrounding Lo Moon when the Los Angeles-based group debuted. Touring extensively in 2016 and 2017, ahead of its first album which arrived in early 2018, the band released but one song during that time — “Loveless,” which owes more than its name to the seminal album by drone rockers My Bloody Valentine — and made it available exclusively on DSPs.
Much later, a video arrived on YouTube. Otherwise, if you wanted to purchase Lo Moon music, you were looking at buying a 10” vinyl at their merch table.Yet the group was performing a full album at its shows, so why the material freeze-out?
Turns out it wasn’t a marketing ploy meant to project an air of secrecy around Lo Moon’s songs, but rather, a frustrating situation which found a record label and its just-signed rock band at odds. “The label’s idea must have been that ‘Loveless’ would be released, nothing would be said about it, and it would do its own thing,” says Lo Moon’s pedigreed guitarist, Sam Stewart, the offspring of Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart and Bananarama’s Siobhan Fahey. “But reality kicks in when people are coming to the show and the mystery is over as soon as they see it, and you’ve got nothing to give them.”“We played 70 shows between ‘Loveless’ and the next single,” says the group’s frontman Matt Lowell, who penned the fateful “Loveless” and used it as his calling card to connect with Stewart and bassist/keyboardist Crisanta Baker when he moved to Los Angeles from New York.
Columbia Records scooped up the then-trio, now a foursome with the addition of drummer Sterling Laws, and made the decision to withhold music from the group’s growing audience.
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