A Night With No Moon casts Carmouflage Rose as a Romeo of the clubs. He is looking for his Juliet. He never finds her. Unfortunately, she is too either too busy to reply to his texts or simply just not that into him. Emotional devastation follows.
Carmouflage Rose is the stage name of Brisbane’s Larry Herrington. His debut EP Late Nights arrived in 2017. Second, Taste followed in 2018. During this time, Carmouflage Rose found favour with a large triple j listenership and built a steady festival presence.
A Night With No Moon is his third EP. It kicks off with the booming ‘Powerplay’ and swaggering ‘Tipsy’. After, Herrington presents listeners with more ambitious numbers such as ‘Crash and Burn.’ This represents the duality of Carmouflage Rose. Paired with producer James Angus, he certainly has more room to grow, musically speaking, into something uniquely his own. Just as easily he could amplify the crowd-pleasing elements of US hip hop and R&B that, 10 years since the release of Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’, the Australian public is as hungry as ever for.
A lot can happen on a night out. The story of A Night With No Moon plays out in real-time. Herrington sets his story in a smoky nocturnal city. He focuses, obsessively, on love. Like Drake and The Weekend, he is addicted to the highs and lows of love. Rose is in heavenly ecstasy when he is receiving it and adrift without it.
The music of A Night With No Moon puts across the most important element of a Carmouflage Rose recording: the feeling. This EP is about mood as much as a story. Pop’s eminent certified lover boys often sing with silken vocals. Camouflage Rose distinguishes his own voice, alongside an accomplished rapper’s flow, with a gravelly dancehall edge. By the time A Night With No Moon concludes, these smooth-and-husky vocals have documented the love-drunk beginnings of a romance and its visceral demise.
It is easy to playfully paint Herrington as a confessional Casanova. The greater question his music poses is this: Australia is yet to embrace a chart-topping artist who can give them Drake’s pathos or The Weekend’s romantic ecstasy. There is a need for someone who can sing about nights of burning desire and the tormented heartache which follows. The time is right. And, as A Night With No Moon makes clear, Carmouflage Rose is poised for the task.
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