MOON HOLIDAY – MOON HOLIDAY

Alex Ward, AKA Moon Holiday, is from Sydney, but spent at least part of her childhood in China. By her own admission her memories of China inform the spirit of her music, if not her lyrics. So, with that tantalizing scrap of biography, let’s listen to her self-titled debut EP. No Creature Like It sets a template of sorts: employing tumbling, reverb-laden keyboard ostinatos, Ward sketches a soundscape of glassy geometric forms that seem to spin and gently collide. Then come the vocals: a wordless sighing, the ends of phrases processed so they stretch like liquorice. “Check your balance,” she warns on Capsular, “Too unhealthy to sustain.”  These cryptic snatches of interior monologue are set to an appropriately unsettling bed of drones, ricocheting electronic drums and snarling synths. Still, the overriding mood is one of serenity, of weightlessness, of an outsider’s bird’s-eye view.  On Want (“Want is disturbing and it wakes up the neighbours”) she comes across as sleepy and unsettled , an insomniac wandering a half-remembered city. This is an assured debut, full of muted emotion and mystery.
***1/2