Pocket Moon

While his previous album “Step Into The Earthquake” from 2017 was a poetic reaction to the US political disaster, on Pocket Moon Simon Joyner turns to the private, the small gestures, the everyday, the interpersonal and the intimate. His music is full of attentiveness: Joyner observes the violence, beauty and absurdity of everyday life at close range and finds an appropriate, meaningful form. Anyone who listens can laugh with him, think about it or sometimes be frightened and run away screaming.Simon Joyner, who musically appreciates the unconventional, the unconcealed - those sounds and artists who venture to the brittle, unpolished edges - took a risk with Pocket Moon that was inspiring for him: Instead of recording with his band The Ghost, in his hometown of Omaha, he asked his longtime musical partner Michael Krassner to put together a band for him in Phoenix. He only got to know them during the actual recording sessions. There were no separate rehearsals; instead, they recorded, mostly live, what developed musically at this meeting.For all their minimalism, together they achieved the kind of fine sonic openness, tension and detachment that Joyner probably wanted. To our ears, Pocket Moon is probably one of the finest of his 14 albums.