A pair of Fleet Foxes teams with some of its oldest, dearest friends to create an otherworldly panorama of sound
In the middle of the last decade, future Poor Moon frontman Christian Wargo suddenly found himself in limbo. After two records and several years spent burning up the American highway, the first bonafide nationally touring band he’d ever fronted, Crystal Skulls, was unraveling. Drummer Casey Foubert had begun touring alternately with Sufjan Stevens and David Bazan; guitarist Yuuki Matthews eventually ended up in The Shins, and keyboardist Casey Wescott joined a new Sub Pop band that was about to break in a big way—Fleet Foxes.
“I was like, ‘Alright, now what?’” Wargo recalls. Not knowing the answer, he threw himself into the only thing that made sense, the one thing he’d done consistently since he was 11 years old—hide out in his bedroom, write songs and make demos.
“[I was] coming to terms with how little control you have over things,” he says, “and how making plans doesn’t necessarily get you where you want to be.” Wargo’s new songs also dealt with the pressures of aging and the limited amount of time we have in life compared to what we hope to accomplish. “All the while,” he says, “[you’re] trying to keep yourself from slipping into despair; trying to find some purpose to keep doing what you’ve always done and derive some sort of pleasure from it.”
Oftentimes back then, when Wargo did venture beyond the confines of his bedroom, he’d catch his old bandmate Wescott’s shows with Fleet Foxes. Soon, he’d been invited to sing with the band, and then to fill in on bass. Before long, he was a full-fledged member. “I was looking for a chance to back somebody else, to be in a band [again] and learn,” Wargo says. “I saw Fleet Foxes as a way to be a part of something that felt natural, and to give me time to re-evaluate what I was doing with my own [music].”
Several years passed as Wargo relished his supporting role and, in his spare time, added to the batch of songs he’d begun puzzling together between Crystal Skulls and Fleet Foxes. He wasn’t sure when he wrote them whether they’d be for either of those bands or some new project, so he decided not to stress about fitting a particular aesthetic and instead wrote whatever felt right at the time. This seemingly disparate backlog of songs would eventually provide the material for Poor Moon’s debut EP, Illusion, as well as its new eponymous full-length.
“Music is a mirror into what’s going on with me,” Wargo says. “I try not to push it any specific direction. … It tends to show me things about myself that I didn’t even know were going on.”
THE MEN IN THE MOON
Last year, Wargo enlisted a trio of his friends to back him at a handful of house shows—his Crystal Skulls/Fleet Foxes bandmate Wescott, and Ian and Peter Murray of The Christmas Cards. Having met all the way back in high school (except for Wargo, who joined them soon after in the trenches of the Seattle music scene), the group had deep roots and instant chemistry.
Peter—an accomplished classical guitarist—brought a passion for minutiae and his impressive chops to the band, adding both technical skill and imagination in equal measure. Ian held the reins—keeping things simple and sparse where they needed to be, and expertly dialing in the hooks, while Wescott pushed the sonic boundaries, always shedding light on the the music and getting the most out of stoic leader Wargo, who came equipped with his arsenal of tunes.
“We all have our own projects, and we wouldn’t just get behind any old songwriter,” Ian explains. “We recognize that Christian has a really unique knack for songwriting. … We believe in his material.”