When I lived in Washington, DC in the early 90’s, the only radio station worth a d*mn was the “modern rock” station WHFS. Baton Rouge, LA’s We Landed on the Moon would have fit perfectly with the artists that WHFS was playing at that time.

We Landed on the Moon’s new disc, This Will Be One for the Books, has a BIG sound and the band barrels through their songs with a high-energy pop exuberance. WLOTM’s ringing guitar riffs and melodic verse-chorus-verse sound should ring a familiar chord with anyone who was listening to the radio during the post-grunge 90’s. “We just wanted to make a rock record,” explains guitarist, John Lambremont. “There were times in the past where I felt like we’d get caught up in trying to do so much, too much- with this record, we just wanted to make music that makes people feel cool, even if they are just hanging out in their jammies. To make them feel as if they are right there with us.”

It is tough to put my finger on a point of comparison – frequent comparisons seem to be to bands like Blondie (don’t hear that at all) and Echobelly (don’t remember what they sounded like). Comparisons to bands like Paramore and The Grates start to scratch the surface but these comparisons are still too remote. One facet of the band’s music that limits an immediate comparison is that, while a pop-band at heart, a number of songs contain in-song stylistic jumps so there is almost a latent prog-rock influence lurking below the surface.

We Landed on the Moon: 'Across the Sun' (MP3)

"I can say that from my point of view, I remember that when we first started playing 'Across the Sun' we had a hard time figuring out if we wanted it to have a kind of weird waltz-ish feel or make it a straight up rock song; then one practice it kind of dawned on us -- why not both? And the result is what you hear now. I'd also like to say that this is my favorite song to play live. I love the swell of the music at the end. It's kind of fun that it ended up being a song that everyone sings along to at WLotM! shows." -- Guitarist John Lambremont

The good and the bad of This Will Be One for the Books is that if you liked the above track, you will like the entire album as ten of the eleven songs are all stylistically similar. The last song, “No Show”, is a complete style shift and sounds like an acoustic country demo was accidentally appended to the master tape.

Links:
We Landed on the Moon