Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
We have visions of where we want to be in live, the delusionary spell of wanting to live out our fantasy in places we can only at times ever dream of seeing, it is the same in how we wish the world to be, at one, harmonious, in keeping with nature and free from the phantasms that crow and screech in ill- tempered voices when all Hell breaks loose.
If Heaven is a place on Earth, then the vision of Hell must be within the same parking zone, and whether we wrestle with our choices in the abstract of Hallucinations or in the limitless cool of Hellucination, then what remains must be of our consequence to bear; and for the outrageously talented L.A. based Betty Moon, Hell is other people not playing by the rules and inflicting the nightmares they revel in onto the rest of humanity.
The point of evolving as an artist is to be never afraid of looking back, of finding what revelations brought you to the place in which your soul inhabits at a fixed point in time and realising just how fluid you are; Hell and the Hallucinations are only terrifying if you allow the image of yourself to become distorted, that you refuse to acknowledge all that you have come through and present a picture of glittering completeness without any flaws.
It is in flaws and the seeking of continual progression that one of Toronto’s leading lights, Betty Moon, has drawn influences across her career in Rock, soul, electronica and pop and sent each song out into the world with a punch of aggression and the subtly of tenderness woven together to form a series of music which is bold, brash and overloaded with intelligence and desired form.
Attitude will take you anywhere, the art of the Hellucination will give you an all-season pass, and in the songs Dirty Love, Figure It Out, Save My Soul, Get Your Gun and Hands Full Of Nothing attitude becomes all consuming, the fire in the stomach to which the listener only feels love for and which the continuing point of experimenting is given freedom, given power to suggest that the hallucination can become a visible and creative triumph.
To follow the trend is perhaps to be continually left behind, but in Betty Moon’s music the thrill is always leading the way, come Hell or high water the revelation is an ever-continuing cycle of passion and visions and one that cannot be overstated on how enjoyable listening to Hellucination is. Always remarkable, always complete.
Betty Moon releases Hellucination on April 20th.
Ian D. Hall