Instinct, the last Moles record, came out in 1994. Since then, Richard Davies has released three albums under his own name and two as part of Cardinal, which raises the question—why revive the Moles moniker? The proof is in the music. Davies’s solo records each expressed a unique personality, but they were united in their lucid expression of songwriting craft. Cardinal merged Davies’ voice and songs with Eric Matthews’ flare for baroque arrangements. The Moles were more complicated. What started in Australia as a quartet whose tunes bore favorable comparison to Flying Nun acts like the Chills and Able Tasmans wound up as a vehicle for experiments in pop deconstruction after Davies settled without the rest of the band in the U.S. On Instinct, the final Moles album, Davies put his songs to the test.
Tonight’s Music renews that spirit of experimentation and puts it in dialogue with the other forces that have shaped his music since the late ’80s. Sometimes these exchanges take place within a song; one recurring device is a shift between a dirty guitar track that sounds like it’s being run through a toy amp and a full-frequency recording of a whole band, and Davies’ voice is rendered chameleonic by the different effects applied to it. But it also takes place at the level of the songs, which shift between conventionally structured tunes with satisfyingly bulked-up riffs and lilting choruses and disorienting sonic collages. At the core are lyrics abstract enough to keep you coming back and digging for meaning until the next Moles record, however many decades off that might be.
—Bill Meyer
