…it’s been far too long since Lab Partners have graced us with a new release. Since 2007’s Keep Quiet EP [Reverb Records], the band have changed labels [to Chicago's Pravda Records], battled with their home studio flooding and having to be rebuilt, and bringing in a new drummer: Kevin Vaughn [ex-Heartless Bastards]. While some bands might have crumbled under these pressures, Lab Partners thankfully endured and now present an incredibly rewarding new album: Moonlight Music…

…recorded at their home studio over the last couple of years [and through a flood & subsequent rehabilitation of the studio], Lab Partners continue their trajectory fueled by vintage British shoegaze, 60s psych, and anthemic choruses that are easily transferable to a Wembley-sized context. Weaving between fuzzed-out space-rock epics and delicate, pastoral lamentations, Mike Smith’s ethereal vocals seep through layers of consciousness in reverb-soaked waves. While Vaughn and keyboardist Amy Smith hold down the rhythmic center, guitarist Mike Volk traces subtle outlines around the vocals with distinctive lines that alternately compliments and juxtaposes with an ease that makes these songs feel as if they’d always existed. Throughout the course of the disc, the band finds itself equally at home occupying bombastic and quiet spaces, lending the disc a dynamic quality that will likely provide the disc with a longevity that many contemporaries do not. Whatever the sonic ornamentation, these are songs that burrow in and remain….

…Lab Partners will celebrate the release of Moonlight Music with a performance at Blind Bob’s this Friday, April 2 along with 8-Bit Revival [who are celebrating the release of their new disc, You've Been Believed] and Okay Lindon…

MP3: Lab Partners “Strange”

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MP3: Lab Partners “We’ve Been Burned”

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