Turn the pages of time back a few years to June 2021, and Canadian alt-rocker duo cleopatrick had just released their rip-roaring debut ‘BUMMER’, a masterful entrance and one that garnered them plenty of praise. However, if you skipped forward to their newest full-length album, FAKE MOON, you definitely would’ve missed a chapter or two.
In the four years between these albums, their sound has been honed, developed, experimented on, and matured greatly from the sticky-floor sounding rock that that duo were producing back then. The opening track ‘Heat Death’ glitches into life, this plodding digital fuzz juxtaposed by the softness of the guitar and the drums, which feel like they’re being tapped, as opposed to hit. This background eletronica glitches profusely as the track stumbles onwards, dragging its heels and demanding to be heard as vocalist Luke Gruntz’s distinctive vocals creep over the top of it all.
This distortion emanates onto ‘BAD GUY’ too, with its bit-crushed guitar and heavily compressed vocals that could almost have been recorded using a 90s games console microphone. It’s a distinctive change from the band they used to be, and so acutely clever. This looping glitching helps to drive home the themes of repetition and guilt that the band hopes to embed.
While tracks like ‘Hammer’ and ‘Please’ flirt voraciously with being shoegaze, the electronic-driven interlude of ‘Softdrive’ and the soft-indie anthem of ‘Big Machine’ truly help to ensure that the project isn’t a one-trick pony. Fans of the band’s original sound might, at this point, be desperate for an injection of pace or adrenaline, but this mature sound refuses to accelerate for anyone. It is delicate and emotional, and while their big rock sound, FAKE MOON still remains gritty and abrasive enough in the right areas to set the band apart.
Ending on the impassioned-yet-monotone ‘Love You’, the album by this point has done an emotional number on any listener. It’s an inherently sad album to its very core, but one that aims to reflect and heal rather than compound its misery. Once again, it’s vastly different to its predecessor, but cleopatrick are clearly intent on pushing their sonical boundaries, and if you can manage to look beyond this, what awaits you is an album that manages to juggle refinement and rawness incredibly well. It demonstrates a huge amount of confidence to be able to defy what has come to be expected of you, but it’s a leap of faith that has worked out so well, and this album proves it.
FAKE MOON releases 14th March 2025 via Nowhere Special Recordings, and the band embark on an enormous UK tour that begins in Brighton 18th March 2025, and concludes in the capital at Electric Brixton.
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