Album review: cleopatrick – FAKE MOON

cleopatrick have shapeshifted big time. While their 2021 debut album BUMMER was a gritty collection of stomping, if occasionally overcooked garage rock anthems played at amp-destroying volume, its follow-up isn’t so much a different shade as much as it is an entirely different colour. To put it bluntly, this is not an album with a lot of bangers, but that’s never what the Canadian duo were aspiring to. Their essence still seeps through even when they’re moving at a slower pace, though it’s not necessarily more successful than their earlier music.

FAKE MOON might trudge along at a rarely unchanging tempo, but it’s anything but placid. There’s angst bubbling underneath its lo-fi fuzz, such as in opener HEAT DEATH, which burbles modestly along until a waterfall of squealing feedback hits in its back half. Meanwhile, BAD GUY finds frontman and guitarist Luke Gruntz channeling his prickling agitation into every strike of his strings with a chunky synth humming underneath.

Generally, however, their textured, digitalised scuzz works best when they try and create something loftier. The slowly unspooling HAMMER recalls the warmth and atmosphere of shoegaze in a way that suits them beautifully, while the luminous closer LOVE YOU is tranquil and almost modest, yet no less captivating. By contrast, a couple of more minimalistic songs, particularly SARAH and the title-track, are so thin that they feel uneventful, blurring into the tracks around them.

Without the same adrenaline that BUMMER had burning through it, there’s a risk FAKE MOON could seem a little bland on the surface, but its quirks gradually become more apparent with repeat listens. While there are certainly common threads between their two albums, and definite fragments of greatness here, it feels like cleopatrick’s identity remains in flux.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: EKKSTACY, Fangclub, Dead Poet Society

FAKE MOON is released on March 14 via Nowhere Special