Apples With Moya Finally Returns With a Stellar Second Record
It’s hard to believe there was a time when Great Grandpa was poised to be the next BIG THING out of Seattle. They had all the right elements — sticky songwriting, comfortable angst, freakin’ Al Menne as a vocalist — and given both “Teenage Challenge” and their Audiotree session, they also had momentum to spare. And then Four of Arrows was a game-changer. I remember sitting at the record release at Life on Mars listening with my jaw open. In another lifetime, maybe they would have ascended like Hop Along or Wednesday, but truly good music is an aligning of the planets; we should all just be lucky to bear witness.
At the same time, it’s worth mentioning how much attention the project sucked from everything else the band’s members were up to, projects that were worthy in their own right. Menne put out a whole bunch of stuff, first under Pickleboy and now under their own name: did you listen to any of it? (Freak Accident is fantastic, by the way. Menne really knows how to write an opening song don’t they?)
In the spring of 2019, the year Four of Arrows was released, Great Grandpa guitarists Dylan Hanwright and Cam LaFlam released the debut album of their own project, Apples With Moya. It was called Get Behind The Horses, remember? I have extremely fond memories of this record. What’s funny is that its opening track, “Praise Song,” name-checks a Lomelda track (“I heard ‘Bam Sha Klam,’ that was all I needed”) as an abstract for its thesis about music as personal provenance. Meanwhile, I was attempting a podcast at the time and I had a portable setup to go wherever my guests needed me, and I spent weeks traveling via bus and sidestreet accompanied by nothing but my map app, terminally cloudy skies, and that album. I look back and realize it has firmly become a part of my DNA. (I’m on a lot of cough medicine right now.)
Truth be told, I don’t know if I expected a follow-up, from anybody involved. You reach a point in your life where music is kind of not worth it anymore. Maybe you know what I mean. So I gotta give it up to LaFlam, Hanwright, and everyone else involved — A Heave of Lightness on the Ground is a beautiful surprise, and it’s also fantastic. Never before has the band achieved a one-two knockout like early cuts “Lift” and “Contact,” the latter a significant standout with exquisite layers of backing vocals and piles of stringed instruments. Everything after that flows so well, from the drumless “Force of Love” onward. You can hear the thoughtfulness it took to make it, the year-and-a-half spent culling ideas and shaping the contours.
The production quality has gotten a huge boost, thanks to Hanwright’s ever-sharpening chops but also because of new bandmate (and Hall of Justice engineer) Sam Rosson. It’s eerily similar to the same treatment given to Four of Arrows, where subtle textural additions and instrumental accompaniment add another dimension to the band’s sound. Hanwright, for instance, adds sly touches of banjo to “Contact” and “In Between/Another Winter”; tapped guitar adds a nervy rush to “Quiet Like This”; LaFlam’s vocals reverberate and feed back onto themselves on opener “Mercy.”
As a vocalist, LaFlam is in a different category altogether from Menne (peep their harmony line on “Three in the Fall” though). I put him in the same pool as Neil Young; an unconventionally great voice that doesn’t seem like it could harmonize with itself until you hear it. That’s my favorite kind of voice. And his lyrics hit so often: tiny little etheric epiphanies about loss, memory, and uncertainty that are archetypical of this branch of music. (“I can’t wait to kick off my shroud,” he yells on “Strange Presence,” which might be one of the most PNW lines out there.)
Represented by the separately released “Nettles,” Apples With Moya has always been propelled by an appreciation for rare, tight-knit friendships, and that’s where the album’s many contributions pull double duty. These are people that have spent lifetimes adding kindling to the area’s unique brand of dusty, comfy mix of country and indie and emo. It’s a product of few stakes and real passion, because why else would it be made? Go listen for Christ’s sake. Call your friends.