Poor Moon
Daytrotter Session - Sep 4, 2012
- Welcome to Daytrotter
- Same Way
- Bucky Pony
- People In Her Mind
- Once Before
There appear to be two types of situations abounding on the collection of songs that Christian Wargo wrote for his new project, Poor Moon’s debut EP “Illusion” and its just released, self-titled full-length. The first seems to involve something of an overload, an abundance of ephemera, just too much talking, too many people, too many distractions, too much, too much, too much. It all cooked itself into an avalanche, a dirty, heavy avalanche that finally lost its balance and made a racket falling – at last — down the mountainside, whereupon it covered every sucker raising all the commotion and stink in the first place. The second situation is something of a retreat, or a backing away from the first situation. It’s about getting one’s self lost, or hidden away where little of the debris and none of the people who helped cause much of it can get to them. It’s about just starting anew and just letting people wonder what may have become of them. There’s an appendix to that situation and that’s one of involuntary seclusion. The girl that Wargo sings about in the song, “People In Her Mind,” might be one of those people, though it’s not entirely clear. She could just be a willing non-participant, happy to have cut herself off from the rest of the world, glad to be without the normal hassles that come with engaging in the kinds of social activities and interactions that are always so persistent and tiring. He sings, “She’s the girl that no one could recognize/That no one could identify/Cause no one had heard anything from anyone that knows anything about her…/The people in her life are just people in her mind.” Wargo, Casey Wescott (both members of Fleet Foxes), Ian Murray and Peter Murray create music that speaks to the flimsy interpretations of love and being present. They speak to what it means to feel both of the right now and feeling as if you couldn’t be further away from what’s happening before you at this very moment. It seems to scream to a sensation of needing to achieve some kind of separation, of just getting away – one of those cleanses, something to help you recalibrate and feel and see clearly again. Wargo wishes for this when he sings, “If I could hear your voice/Completely separated from the noise.” This is assuming that there’s any way possible to eliminate the noise, to get away from any of it. It might be that learning the impossibility of such a thing could lead to a place like the one that the aforementioned girl finds – either on her own, or through some unfortunate episodes. Good comes from it when it’s realized that, even there, you can get your sun, you can have your records and your books and you can have your distilled drinking water and all your clothing delivered right to your front door and you don’t have to speak to anyone. The package just thumps down on the porch, with the delivery person rapping a time or two on the door, out of courtesy before driving away and leaving you with your quiet.