Most of the music that lands on my desk is merely work. Of course, I put the effort in, but at the end of the day it’s what pays the bills. Then there is music that doesn’t feel like work at all; rather, it is more akin to talking to someone about your new favorite band. And that is what MothBreath is. It’s great when the thing that you spend all day doing is something you love, which, I’m sure, is how MothBreath feels about making these gorgeous pieces of music.
Although it has always been found in their music, “Sky Bleeds” seems more reliant on a pulsing electronic beat, pushing even further into a sort of chilled-dance realm. And if this lays down the song’s gracious groove, it is what they build on top of it that gives the song sophistication and character.
Like the murmurations of starlings over a twilight landscape that inspired the song, it is the merging of sonic elements that gives “Sky Bleeds” its shape. Sonics rise, echo-soaked guitar motifs are delicately drawn forth, and *Kirsty Dougall*s vocals blur the line between communication and instrumentation.
Sitting somewhere between dream-pop and trip-hop, day and night, heaven and earth, there is something elemental about the song, like a primal sonic ritual or prayer to the natural world, John Libert’s increasingly soaring six-string growing to fill the sky as it describes the beauty before them.
MothBreath reminds me of the ancient bards, making music that is part of the song of the land, a musical map describing the less physical, less tangible, less solid parts of the world around us, capturing its essence in sound. The tools they use may have changed, but the tradition is as old as humanity.
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