by Patrick Pilch (@pratprilch)
Chicago’s Moontype have a new album out tomorrow on Born Yesterday Records and it’s a doozy. On Bodies of Water, the eclectic three-piece string together tight harmonies and rock-solid arrangements with an enduring sense of friendship, trust, and chops. The band’s debut follows a two-sided single, a string of compilation tracks and bass tunes, year 5 - Moontype’s four-song solo EP performed by bassist and vocalist Margaret McCarthy. All four tracks on bass tunes have made their way to Bodies of Water, each brilliantly reconfigured for Moontype’s full band format.
Since convening in 2019, Margaret McCarthy, Ben Cruz and Emerson Hunton have been fleshing out Moontype’s sound, allowing individual influence to elevate McCarthy’s songwriting while dilating the music’s emotional scope with a distinct sound and texture. Post-Trash was able to catch up with the members of Moontype before the release of Bodies of Water. The band spoke with us about geology, Incubus, their creative approach, Earnest the goldfish and the year with no tours. Moontype also put together a playlist of music by friends, which you can find at the end of the interview. Check it out:
Post Trash: When did you all meet and start playing together?
Margaret McCarthy: We all went to the same school. Ben and Emerson played together. I didn’t know either of them really, just tangentially. We all started hanging out when we each moved to Chicago.
Ben Cruz: I moved in May of 2018. Emerson was here for a couple years before that.
Emerson Hunton: Yea, I moved later fall 2016.
MM: I also moved in 2018. June or July.
EH: It’s all a blur. But we started playing music for fun with some other friends on a back porch during the summer and Margaret would come hang out. We started talking and becoming better friends then.
PT: And that’s kind of what Moontype practice looked like last summer - on the back porch?
EH: It’s true.
BC: Moontype practices were in my yard outside.
MM: Emerson was playing a broom on the ground.
E: Yea I played the chair this summer.
PT: That’s what you went to school for right?
E: It’s true. It’s that versatility. You can’t get that without classical music training. [laughs]
PT: All of you have been playing music for a long time. Margaret, according to the press release you were a part of a few riot grrl and hyper pop projects in Massachusetts?
MM: I don’t want to say that’s stretching the truth a bit but I guess I started playing the bass in the middle of college. I was listening to riot grrl music so that’s what I was trying to write. It’s more simple so I was just trying to write songs. When I was in college I was in a pop punk band. I would also play electro pop stuff alone sometimes.
PT: Was there a name for that project?
MM: It’s called Mid Atlantic Rift. It’s still on Bandcamp, you can check it out.
BC: And you were in Lunch.
MM: Yes, Lunch was the pop punk band I was in. Lunch is Jackie Milestone’s band. It’s still a band in Philly.
EH: Love Jackie.
BC: Since moving to Chicago, the main things I’ve been in are The Deals and Moontype. Emerson and I have a band with Jason Stein. We haven’t played in a long time. It’s called Threadbare. It’s semi-improvised music, semi-avant garde composed thing. We were all part of the now-defunct country band called Razor Shines, which was a true back porch type band. The gigs were secondary to the back porch jams, really.
EH: Honestly. We had our priorities right at that time.
BC: We played a lot. Our go to spot was Montrose Saloon. Shout out to Montrose Saloon.
EH: I was here a little earlier than Ben and Margaret. I mostly played in the Chicago improvised scene. Lots of jazz gigs and weirdo improvisation gigs at places like Elastic Arts and Constellation and Hungry Brain. That’s more what I did for the first couple years. I still do that but it’s also been cool to be in these bands and get a little bit more busy.
BC: You also play in Glass Hand, who just put out a record today.
EH: We just put out a record today. Classic sax, bass, drums trio with some friends. Sarah Clausen on alto saxophone and Jakob Heinemann on bass.
PT: Is it an improvisation group?
EH: We improvise a lot but also everyone in the band writes really psycho music so it’s very hard to compose music with improvised sections.
MM: Can you sing an example?
EH: The first one that comes to mind is like “bum-bum-bum beebadoo, boom boom badadobado boo doo doo bah.” That one Sarah wrote. It’s a hit. [laughs] We’re just trying to pull in those audiences that haven’t found a home yet. We’re providing that for them.
BC: Glass Hand is the best at what they do in the city.
EH: Thanks Ben.
PT: Can you talk about the role and importance of friendship and camaraderie in helping this record come together?
BC: Paramount.
MM: Essential.
BC: Deeply essential. I love these people a lot and I don’t think the music would be the same and the band wouldn’t be the same without that. We don’t get together to play music and we’re not part of each other’s lives after that. Our lives and music are very intertwined. There’s a lot of care that goes into both of them.
MM: Agreed. Within the band, we’re all friends with each other and love each other. We recorded with Doug who is a friend and a really caring person. That impacted that process. Now we’re putting it out with Born Yesterday and they are friends. That’s impacted that process. That made me feel really good. Even Tom at Hive Mind. He’s not our friend but he’s Kevin’s friend.
EH: He’s our friend now. I’d just say we’re really deep in the comfort zone with this project, which is really nice. Playing those tunes and figuring out how they should go feels a lot better when it’s not an external thing where you’re like, “I’m going to play drums in this band. We have to figure out how this song goes.” We’re just hanging out anyways and we just happen to know how the music goes.
BC: Not to mention all of our mutual friends who are insanely good supporters of this band and always make us feel really, really good.
EH: Speaking of Doug Malone, I think this recording session was the most relaxed, hanging-out-in-the-studio of any I’ve been a part of. The Deals one was very similar.
BC: It was fast and we didn’t have as much time.
EH: I think with this one was notable in that there wasn’t a time crunch. We could see where things went. It was really nice.
PT: Everyone I’ve spoken to about Doug say he’s the best.
EH: The best.
BC: Doug’s the man.
PT: When you spoke to Studio B, Margaret, you talked about how you write all the songs and each part more or less gets arranged by the band. Can you talk about how that happens? Side question - Emerson can you talk about how Margaret's vocal patterns and melodies impact your arrangements?
MM: That’s accurate. Except there are a few Moontype songs that Ben and Emerson have written, but they’re not on the record. They’re great. Emerson one of yours was stuck in my head the other day. For the songs that I wrote, I write it in my room. I play the bass, singing. Then I come into the practice space and I’m like, “Listen to this song I made.” Then we play it a few times together. Ben is really fast at knowing where all the chords are and Emerson will just mess around and then we’ll slowly start to sit into what feels like the right vibe of the song. We don’t really talk about it like, “this is supposed to be an angsty punk song.” But Ben might start to play angsty chords and I’m like, “oh yea, this is really angsty.” Emerson will be like “bah-bah-bah” and it feels so good. Then we just go right towards it. At some point we stop playing and start talking about and say what feels good, what should be loud, what should sound tender. Then we move toward those things.
BC: It’s really organic the way this stuff happens. Emerson and I have played a lot of music together in a lot of situations. We speak the same sort of language when it comes to writing these parts, which is effectively being given an idea and improvising until it coalesces into something a little more solid. We have done that together a lot in a lot of different contexts. It’s easy to do. Margaret’s music is not easy, but the process of getting it together as a band doesn’t feel like it’s something we have to force.
EH: Regarding the whole process, for me at least, what’s really cool about taking these stems or seeds of songs that Margaret brings in is that they feel like they can exist on their own. Especially because she played them a few times solo with just bass and vocals. About half of the songs on this record had existed previously and they function very nicely as bass and vocals songs. Unlike other bands where there happens to be a bass part. I think it’s a different and nicer challenge to figure out drum parts on what these melodies are. Instead of just being the bass part in a rock band, there feels like there are two equally important parts being presented. It changes my process in a really nice way. It’s pretty much always lyric driven. Since everything can be quiet and can be solo vocals and bass, we need to consciously make a choice. For instance, these lyrics feel like this section is trying to build somewhere, because of what the lyrics sound like to me. Instead of playing everything loud right off the bat, having a reason to do so because of some feeling that’s brought up by what Margaret’s singing about feels nice and it makes it feel like there’s a reason we’re playing them a certain way. There’s a lot of trust. Not being afraid to play dumb shit is really nice. We can play around for a bit and be like, “Well, that wasn’t it.”
BC: Nobody’s going to be afraid to tell you that it was dumb.
EH: When we do a completely unnecessary disco rendition of a song, that’s just dumb.
MM: But we’ll be laughing about it.
BC: We’re not the most efficient band in the world and I think I can own up to that a little bit. [laughs]
EH: Sometimes there needs to be a blues guitar solo. That’s just where we are.
BC: You can count on me.
MM: But sometimes you do things as a joke and it sounds really good and we keep them.
PT: As Emerson mentioned, a lot of these songs were written over the past couple years. How does this play out when you listen back to Bodies of Water? Margaret, do you feel like you’re listening to different versions of yourself or do the songs feel more present since collaborating with Ben and Emerson?
MM: When we all collaborated, I feel like for the songs I used to play alone, they became more of whatever emotion they were. Now when I listen back to them or when we play them, I’m even more so transported back to the feeling that I was in when I wrote them. Which is a trip, especially because the oldest ones I wrote about five years ago. It’s that time of life when things are changing. I’ll listen back and be like, “oh yea, I had that really intense feeling, but I don’t have it anymore.” I think playing the songs magnifies that, but I really appreciate that too because it’s preserving something that feels important to me.
PT: I read you study geology. How does being “rooted in the landscape” change the way you think about the world and how has it affected your approach to songwriting?
MM: I did do that. I feel like geology changed my feeling about the world. The whole thing about geology is that the Earth is changing all the time, it’s just on a scale that we can’t see. Everything’s alive and every rock you see tells a story about where it’s been. Throughout learning about geology, I’ll be driving down I-80 and I’d see some hills and be like, “Oh, there used to be a glacier there. That’s crazy.” There’s definitely some geological metaphors that have crept into my songwriting. I obviously talk about water a lot but I feel like I talk about rocks and salt and saltwater and freshwater because that’s kind of how I think about things. The earth is changing and I’m changing. That’s kind of how it’s gone.
PT: So bodies of water, can you talk about some of your favorites?
BC: Obviously Lake Michigan. I grew up on the East Coast by the beach in New Jersey twenty minutes from the Atlantic Ocean. Huge and also important.
MM: I also love The Atlantic Ocean. I’m from Boston.
EH: I’m the sole Mid-Westerner. I grew up in Minneapolis. Lots of little lakes in Minneapolis, they’re all great. I grew up close to Lake Eerie where there was a little elf house they built in a small tree. It had a little door and you could stick a letter in there. Sometimes the elf would answer.
PT: That would scare the shit out of me.
EH: Yea you don’t want to mess with it. It has a certain energy.
MM: I love the ocean. When I moved to Chicago I was like, “the lake’s nice but it’s just not as great as the ocean.” I feel I’ve grown to love the lake more and more, but it has no salt. That’s just a bummer.
BC: You want a body of water that big to smell like salt. Lake Michigan is beautiful in its own way.
EH: All of us this past year would bike or walk over to the lake.
PT: Speaking of bodies of water, Earnest the goldfish?
EH: Earnest!
MM: Do you want to see him?
PT: Yes, I do.
BC: He’s a star.
MM: I just cleaned his bowl so he’s really looking like a celebrity. It’s poor lighting but there he is. [shows Earnest]
BC: I’ve babysat Earnest, he’s a great houseguest.
EH: There’s a song about Earnest.
BC: It’s on the Days Go By compilation. “Click Clack.”
MM: That’s what he does. He has the pebbles at the bottom of his bowl and he picks them up with his mouth and moves them. And it goes “click-click-click-click.”
BC: He’s a very loud fish. It’s a really unsettling sound when you don’t know when it’s coming. The first time Earnest stayed over I had no idea what was going on. [laughs]
PT: “About You” is about a post-gig romp around Richmond with Bebé Machete. In a Paste article you said your relationship with them melted from a crush into a more lasting and significant friendship. Can you talk about that night and a little more about that song?
MM: I kind of have a pattern of having crushes on my friends. Aside from that, Mobey is their name. Bebé Machete is their stage name. We went to school together. We were on tour together on different friends’ tour and we went to Richmond. I was really bummed out, somebody from our school died that week. I was really feeling bad. Mobey was the person I wanted to be around. I wanted to hang out all the time. We went out in Richmond one night. Richmond is a cool city. It’s kind of weird. There’s a lot of Confederate statues on this one avenue. We walked far. We walked around a bunch of different neighborhoods. We saw the Confederate statue and we walked by a neighborhood with houses then with shops, tattoo parlors. There was a lot of cool art on the walls. It felt really good and we went back to school because of spring break and we were like “let’s hang out every day, all the time.” We made songs together, we made art together and we made a lot of weird jokes together, which is what I love. I wrote that song when they were abroad my last semester of college. I was like, “damn, it’s never going to be like that again.” All the lyrics are specific things I was thinking about. Mobey is really so great.
PT: Can you talk about the importance of the Fall 2019 Moontype tour and how that progressed the band?
EH: Our one tour?
BC: Our most important tour.
PT: Technically your least important, too.
MM: Yes that’s true. Our least important tour you want to hear about? [laughs]
BC: It was huge. By the time we left we played maybe five shows. We’ve played music together a lot. We had some really good shows and it was really fun. But the tour, musically, was important because by the end we sounded so tight and the songs were where they ended up being. We recorded not long after that. About a month and a half after we got back. That tour was important for getting all the music together but also it was just so fun. It’s the longest tour I’ve been on so far. We drove really far and crammed into this little tiny car. Played a show that my parents got to go to, one my sisters got to come to. Which is cool because I went to school far away from New Jersey and they didn’t get to see me play music for a long time. They came to my recitals but they didn’t hear that much of what I felt like being a musician was, for me. It was really cool to play this music for them that I felt very strongly about.
MM: I feel like we became really good friends. We were friends but we became really good friends.
EH: Playing all those shows back to back before we recorded was extremely crucial. I think that’s the best thing about touring before recording, it just lets the music settle in. That’s when we became really good friends, which is really important for the music.
MM: And for our hearts. Also, touring is really fun. I really like seeing different places in the country. It’s my favorite way to travel that I’ve done so far. It’s really nice when you go to a city for a night and you stay with a friend of a friend and you wander around and you eat a burrito and play a show and find a random swimming hole to swim in the next day.
EH: And you get one breakfast recommendation and it’s the best.
BC: I agree, it’s such a fun way to travel. We saw so much cool stuff on that tour. Driving in the mountains.
MM: We drove through the Blue Ridge Mountains. We drove through them and there kept being overlook points where you could look out at the scenery. There was so much we kept being like, “oh let’s stop at this one.” It was really nice.
PT: Where did you play in New York?
EH: Dodge 112, which is in Brooklyn. A friend of mine helps run it. It was a really fun show, we had a great crowd. It’s an interesting space because it’s a recording studio but they do events there too. It’s on the third floor of this little building.
MM: It felt like a house show.
EH: Yea, it felt like a house show except it sounded really good and it was full of people I hadn’t seen in a couple years. The people we played with were so great. We split with Allegra Krieger, who is a great songwriter and singer. My friend Nate recommended we have her play solo. She is great, she put out a great record through Northern Spy this past year. Definitely worth checking out. Nate is in a band called Market, he played too. It was the perfect gig.
BC: Market is so good. Just really want to plug Market here.
EH: Yea, listen to Market.
BC: James Acaster likes Market, so you should like Market. He’s a crazy British comedian.
EH: He has a Spotify playlist and he was really hyping up Market, which was really wild. It’s just our friend Nate’s band and somehow this guy found it.
PT: Let’s go back to Fan Music from 2017. I think it’s a really clever concept, it reminds me of some of Liz Harris’ work. Can you talk about the project?
MM: It’s funny it’s on our Bandcamp because it’s not related to anything else we do. It was made when I created the name Moontype. This has been a long term thing for me but when you listen and you listen for a long time you can start to hear things in it. This is kind of a tangent but when I went to music camp we had this tradition called “serenade.” There was a boys dorm and a girls dorm and there was one night of camp when the boys would come over and everyone would be asleep and they’d start playing songs for you. Everybody runs out into the common area and we’re like, “woah!” Toward the last week of camp we were anticipating them coming but we were like, “when’s it going to be?” It was so hot and we had all these box fans going. We’d be laying in bed trying to go to sleep and I’d be listening to the box fans and I’d keep going, “is that a guitar? Is that a guitar? Are they here?” That’s just a side thing but I wanted to play some songs and sing them with the box fan. So that’s what I did. I used the box fans in an installation I made. I tried to fill a room with VHS tape and I had these songs playing. People could just walk through. That’s why those are there. I remember being like “I need to put these on a Bandcamp, I need a name.” So I picked Moontype.
PT: I was going to ask, is the name related to the Moon System of Embossed Reading? It’s cool.
MM: Yea I Googled that before, it is cool! It’s a different version of braille. It’s pretty. I didn’t think about that when I made the name. There’s another band called Moontype.
PT: We’ll plug them. Can you talk about the last track in your session with Live from Studio B?
MM: Wow, take me back in time. I wrote that stuff back when I was in my last year of college. That was my senior recital. I had some songs and we played them in a greenhouse on top of the science building. I used to write songs like that on the computer. I’d have some keyboard stuff and I’d sing and there’d be a bunch of other electronic sounds.
PT: Would you incorporate that sound into any future Moontype songs or ideas?
MM: I haven’t thought or talked about it at all. I don’t know!
EH: We recorded some songs during the heavier quarantine months before we started playing together at all again. That was a solid eight months of not playing music together at all. Not being at our instruments allowed us to add some different sounds. Some of the sketches we were passing back and forth were synthier or atmospheric. I don’t think anyone’s actually opposed but being able to sit in a room and play together feels different and nice after not being able to.
PT: Ben you sing lead on “Feather” which is a track from Babe City’s Songs for Bail compilation. Who wrote that song? Can you talk about that track? Does Moontype have any future plans to have you sing lead on songs?
BC: I wrote that song. I think I wrote it during quarantine.
EH: We started playing it in the backyard over the summer.
BC: Before that we had talked about me and Emerson bringing in songs prior to that. That was one of the first songs that we’d brought in. Since then we’ve brought in more.
MM: We played one of Emerson’s songs live once.
BC: We’ve played one or two of them live, too. Once at The Hideout. We played one of Emerson’s too that night. I think we’ve come around to the idea that while all of the music on this record is Margaret’s, music she wrote, this band has become its own thing. It’s not just Margaret’s music. Margaret’s music has been the main vehicle but now the sound has solidified into its own thing. Emerson and I have been bringing in music since before the pandemic. For me, singing is hard and kind of scary. But I feel a lot of comfort with Emerson and Margaret. That’s why I’ve been able to bring songs in at all, since they’re both very encouraging. They make me feel the stuff I bring in is worth doing, too.
MM: It is. We’re definitely going to play more Ben and Emerson stuff.
EH: The song I wrote and brought into this band, all the voice memos from me writing it are from while I was playing piano and drums for little kid dance classes. Listening back to them, it’s me playing a kind of messed up version of the verse on the piano and there’s the sound of lots of little children running around in the background. So that’s cute to listen back to.
PT: “Your Tongue is the Tongue that Decides” is on your Bandcamp page and in the liner notes of the record. Can you talk about that line?
MM: That’s something we started saying in the car on tour.
BC: Yes. There were decisions that needed to be made, and often the person who was asking the question was the one whose tongue was the tongue that would decide.
MM: If you’re in a situation where you’re like, what should we eat for dinner, and you’re between a country taco and a smooth pudding, for example, you can imagine both of those things on your tongue and your tongue will decide.
BC: Your tongue is the tongue that decides. It’s kind of an affirming thing.
PT: So are you giving meal authority to the first person who asks everyone else if they’re hungry?
BC: It wasn’t always conferred to the person who asked. Those decisions are often necessities and you don’t have time to dilly dally. The easiest way was whoever’s tongue was going would be the tongue that decides.
EH: You got to make a decision at a certain point. Not food specific, necessarily. Tongues do all sorts of things. I think we all walk through life tongue forward. [laughs]
PT: Yea, I feel like a photo finish in a race, the tongue is not used as much as it should be used.
EH: I think it’s a necessary and beautiful and functional extension of oneself. [laughs]
BC: There’s nothing like your tongue, and your tongue is the tongue that decides.
PT: Ok these are silly questions. If you could trade places with any person dead or alive? I was thinking about the rules to this and I let’s say you experience their consciousness for a period of time like in Being John Malkovich.
EH: Maybe one of the astronauts for 30 minutes of the moon landing and I would trade back. Just so I can prove-
BC: That it was a hoax.
EH: Yes, that it was a hoax. I’d like to be present during that shoot in LA. [laughs]
MM: I feel I’d want to be a scuba diver or something. I have been underwater before, but not that deep.
BC: I’d be a dog. I’d like to be happy all the time.
MM: Some dogs get really stressed out though.
BC: Yea I’d be a non-stressed out dog. I’d be a lab. I’d love to be a vizsla in a fancy house with another dog brother or a sister. I just want another dog friend to experience this bliss with me.
PT: Ok I have a joke. I had an idea today of what you should call your band if you three ever started an Emerson, Lake and Palmer cover band. Do you want to hear it?
MM: Yea.
PT: Emerson, Ben and Margaret.
MM: That’s hilarious.
BC: We should just call this band that name. It’s very straightforward.
MM: Pat do you have any more jokes for us?
PT: Yea, one or two more. On the Fuck, Marry, Kill Wikipedia page, the game has been described as “tasteless and juvenile.” But I don’t feel bad when it comes to a group’s musical output as opposed to a human being. That being said, Goo Goo Dolls, Third Eye Blind or Incubus?
BC: That’s hard.
MM: I honestly haven’t listened to Incubus that much, although I’m sure I know their songs.
BC: I’ve listened to Incubus plenty for the rest of us. [laughs]
MM: I feel like the Goo Goo Dolls are very saccharine.
BC: I got mine. I’m killing the Goo Goo Dolls. I’m fucking Third Eye Blind and I’m marrying Incubus.
PT: So you’ve listened to a lot of Incubus.
BC: I have. I even saw them live in concert with my uncle.
EH: I’d fuck Incubus, for sure. Just for the thrill. I don’t think I’d want to be associated long term frankly.
BC: They haven’t aged really well.
MM: What do they sound like?
BC: They’re like 90s rock but kind of techno. They’re a rock band with a DJ, which definitely says a lot.
PT: Margaret I think you might know “Drive.” You definitely don’t have to answer.
MM: I think I’d want to marry Third Eye Blind.
EH: That’s what I was leaning towards too but I don’t want to kill Goo Goo Dolls, that feels wrong. I think you’d have to fuck the Goo Goo Dolls.
MM: I’d take that on. What’s yours, Pat?
PT: I’d probably kill Incubus. Sorry. I love Incubus. Have you seen the “Pardon Me” music video? It’s great. Brandon Boyd sings to an older version of himself and the older version of himself is him wearing a fake mustache.
BC: I’ll just say the reason why I’m marrying Incubus is not because of the guy that sings. The guitar player, I always liked his parts. They’re dear to my heart for that reason. It’s not the vocals.
PT: The thing with marrying Goo Goo Dolls, is that if I did marry Goo Goo Dolls, I’d never have to question their fidelity. With Third Eye Blind I’d be like “Oh, you were so good on the first album, but now everything is petering off. Is it me?” [laughs]
MM: Oh my god. Yea, it’s you.
PT: Do you like Dave Matthews Band?
BC: No.
PT: Ok.
BC: There’s a lot of really silly music I like but Dave Matthews Band is not one of them.
EH: Yea I can’t say I do, either.
BC: They have a following in the same way Phish or the Dead would. Just like Moontype does.
PT: Yes, cult jam bands.
EH: If we were to answer the question “what would Moontype sound like in 2070?” That’s what we’d say. A cult jam band.
Bodies of Water is our April 2 via Born Yesterday Records. Here is Moontype’s Buy Music Club playlist featuring the bands and artists mentioned in this interview: