It must be a little demoralising for a musician to leave a moderately successful band and be forever known as that group’s ex singer or former bass player. All their big plans for a future decorated by their own name in lights forever tainted by journalists seemingly incapable of just letting the past be the past. Just ask Graham Coxon, who has released seven critically-acclaimed albums over the course of a decade-long solo career, but is still primarily identified by his time in Blur. So apologies in advance to Andrew Cedermark, former Titus Andronicus guitarist, whose solo debut Moon Deluxe is among the finest you’ll hear all year, and a man who certainly deserves better than a future defined by past associations.
So let’s tear that particular band-aid off and get it out of the way: Andrew Cedermark used to be in Titus Andronicus but now he isn’t. Since leaving the band he has spent time teaching at his old high school and working for his local paper and relocated from New Jersey to Virginia. At various points over the last two years he has somehow found time to self-record a bunch of songs that recall the raw, raucous punk rock ‘n’ roll spirit of his old comrades without actually sounding anything like them. Taking strands of numerous styles, from country, folk and blues to lo-fi indie and noisy post-rock, Cedermark and a select handful of conspirators have woven together an enchanting tapestry of fuzzy cosmic pop that plays like a condensed history of the last fifty years of American alternative music.
Initially, Moon Deluxe appears to be very much a guitarist’s album. Freewheeling but packed with hooks, technically impressive without being flashy, Cedermark’s playing is the thing that hits hardest at first. Opener “Ad Infinitum” starts out as a lovely duet between Cedermark and his girlfriend, Sadness singer Carianne King, about cosy winter evenings, but soon erupts into a huge climax, complete with bells and xylophones, that sounds like a Grizzly Bear orchestral arrangement played on a single guitar. The title track swings from insistent acoustic strumming to howling squalls of feedback and crashing drums before segueing into the seasick lurch of “Gloria ’85.” “Anchorite,” with its lyrics of a man who “sings the song that God etched into his tongue” echoes the windswept grandeur of the Walkmen, and it is perhaps that band that this album brings to mind most often, sharing a knack for fashioning pop songs from such unlikely sources as mariachi music and old-fashioned waltzes.
Despite the disparity of its component parts, as a whole Moon Deluxe flows perfectly. The droning 12-string raga “Untruth” gives way to flickering guitar miniature “X,” which in turn dovetails into the slow-burning “Will Not Compete,” and so on. Admittedly, it’s no Smile, but Cedermark displays a clear understanding of the classic “song cycle” approach to album-writing epitomised by the likes of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. Ironically, the only track that stands apart from the pack stylistically is the closing “I Won’t Know Me Anymore,” a frantic scramble to the finish line that is the closest relation here to his work with his former band. Paying homage to a lineage of great guitarists, from Ry Cooder through John Fahey to David Pajo and beyond, Moon Deluxe also highlights Cedermark’s considerable songwriting talents, and stands up as one of the 2010’s most accomplished and enjoyable debuts.
