Arthur Moon Announces Self-Titled Debut Album, Drops New Single

Arthur Moon - the Brooklyn avant-pop group fronted by Lora-Faye Åshuvud along with collaborators Cale Hawkins (Quincy Jones, Bilal, Wyclef Jean) and Martin D. Fowler (a composer for This American Life) - just announced a self-titled debut album, out on vinyl in July via Vinyl Me, Please and everywhere August 2. Today, BlackBook shared the explosive new single from the album, "Homonormo" just in time for LGBTQ Pride Month, ahead of their upcoming fall tour with Oh Land.

Stream / Share: "Homonormo"

"While writing 'Homonormo' I was thinking a lot about what it is that we have to gain when we fail at living within some prescribed definition of 'success' or 'normalcy,'" explains Lora-Faye. "If we 'settle down' do my partner and I become a part of some respectability politics nightmare, where gay people are only OK if they mimic the structures of straight society? Do we further alienate everyone who doesn't want that/doesn't fit that/can't do that? Do we leave those communities behind as "dis-respectable," denied rights, denied freedoms, denied safety?"

Previous singles "I Feel Better," "Standing Wave" and "Wait a Minute" from the record gave listeners a taste for Lora-Faye's deconstructed pop music, which celebrates "incorrect music" and the queer impulse: breaking the rules, and finding the power that comes from doing things "wrong" by celebrating it, owning it, making it the center of the music.

Catch Arthur Moon on tour with Oh Land & stay tuned for more to come!

Tour Dates w/ Oh Land
9/24: Brooklyn, NY @ The Bell House
9/25: Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe
9/26: Washington, DC @ The Miracle Theater
9/27: Chicago, IL @ SPACE
10/20: Seattle, WA @ Columbia City Theater
10/21: Portland, OR @ The Church Concert Hall
10/23: San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
10/24: Los Angeles, CA @ Bootleg Theater

Arthur Moon is the moniker of award-winning composer/singer Lora-Faye Åshuvud, who lives and works in Brooklyn, where she was raised, and collaborates on the Arthur Moon project with musicians like Cale Hawkins (Quincy Jones, Bilal, Wyclef Jean) and Martin D. Fowler (a composer forThis American Life). Åshuvud's musical origins were in folk and rock, and with Arthur Moon she takes those influences - an intentionally out-of-tune banjo, or a familiar refrain - and explodes them through the filter of electronic pop to make something totally unique. The result is poignant, raucous and perfectly "incorrect," as exemplified on the 2017 Our Head EP.

Åshuvud often writes her lyrics using cut-up newspaper articles, and describes the process of composing the band's rollicking, iconoclastic arrangements as similarly collage-like. A stubborn autodidact, Åshuvud is the rare multi-instrumentalist and composer who doesn't read music, which means her queer compositional voice sounds both totally fresh and a little tilted, guided by intuition and improvisation rather than formal training. Åshuvud's metier is what she calls "incorrect music" and "odd theory"- music that feels good and strange in equal measure. (She also hosts "Odd Theory," a show with New York Public Radio's New Sounds.) Her debut full-length, Arthur Moon, will be released exclusively on vinyl record this July via Vinyl Me, Please, later available digitally on August 2.

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