Moonlover, the project of Melbourne via Paris musician Quang Dinh, will release the new album, Shangri-La, this Thursday, 8th December. We’re premiering it on Music Feeds.
Dinh was formerly a member of 2000s indie pop and British Invasion revivalists Little Red, playing bass and providing vocals on 2008’s Listen to Little Red and 2010’s Midnight Remember, before going solo as Moonlover.
Moonlover: Shangri-La
Shangri-La is an eight song collection that includes the singles ‘Alive’ and ‘Tried to Resist Ya’. The album is awash with vocal harmonies and psychedelic sounds produced by saxophones, clarinets, keyboards, glockenspiels, and the traditional Vietnamese instrument, the đàn tranh.
In a statement shared with Music Feeds, Dinh said that Shangri-la was written in the years following the first Moonlover LP, 2018’s Thou Shall Be Free.
“Lockdown happened, I picked up a few new instruments, the sax, clarinet and đàn tranh,” he said. “It was recorded a bit here, there and everywhere. In a Collingwood studio, out back of a country pub in Bungaree, in my Footscray share house. Had a bunch of songs and whittled them down to this dreamy bunch.”
At the end of the process, Dinh feels a sense of liberation. “It’s hard making a second album, especially in the stagnant muck of 2020-22,” he said. Despite this, he’s proud of the record and the colours contained therein. “[It’s] another little piece in my œuvre, another little something that I handmade, another little picture of a time.”
Moonlover’s Shangri-La is out digitally on Thursday, 8th December.
Further Reading
Love Letter To A Record: Moonlover’s Quang Dinh On Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’
Andy Bull: “You’ve Got to Accept Your Limitations as Part of the Package”
