Mr. Moccasin
Mr. Moccasin is an indie rock band from Baltimore who have two previous albums and a new one on the way in early 2013. They play with elements of folk, punk, dream-pop, and electronic. I’ve seen their name a bunch of times in my mailbag, and while I was doing some mailbag maintenance yesterday, I finally gave them a thorough listen.
The band is headed up by the Azerbaijan-born singer Hanna Badalova, who sings alternately in English and in Russian. Their new album, which is due out on January 15, is titled Xaha, which is the Russian cyrillic spelling of Hanna. They’ve made the lead single from that album available as a free download via bandcamp and their label Bleek Records.
This is that song.
“Black on Black” by Mr. Moccasin
I can’t make heads or tails of it, and it’s a bit drone-y, but I really like this song. Although this sounds almost nothing like Warpaint, it reminds me of everything that I like about Warpaint. It also reminds me of everything that I like about the Brooklyn brand of dream-pop. There’s also something about those falsetto backing vocals that reminds me of The Besnard Lakes
I can’t even be sure, to be honest, that the entirety of this song is in English.
As much as I enjoy Badalova’s voice, and as much as I enjoy the delay effect that they have on her vocals, I think that my favorite bits are the instrumental breaks. There’s about three of those little breaks, each of about 15 seconds. Look at 1:15, again at 2:28, again at 3:32, and then the instrumental coda starting at 4:49. Each of those instrumental breaks is different, and each signals that the next section of the song is slightly different while still same-y. It’s a neat trick that I didn’t notice on the first couple of listens.
The album will be out on January 15, and you can pre-order your digital copy here.
this is that song 
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