Moontype

So much of Moontype’s life-affirming magic is from the evolving confidence and relentless creative playfulness of its lead singer and bassist Margaret McCarthy. As the leader of the Chicago indie rock outfit, her music tackles soft and vulnerable emotions with striking clarity and immersive, unorthodox melodies. Their second album, I Let The Wind Push Down On Me, serves as a reinvention for the band—not just for their new and expanded lineup—but for how McCarthy navigates the changes in her own life and the messy feelings she sings about. Out May 23 via Orindal Records, the LP is a patient document of feeling things out, being easy on yourself, and finding the beauty in small moments.

Following the 2021 release of Bodies of Water, Moontype’s critically acclaimed first album, the band underwent a recharging period of major and minor transformations. “I have gotten better at being alone, and found ways to feel strong and powerful in myself,” says McCarthy. “I'm better at having the relationships I want to have and setting the boundaries I want to set. For this record, I didn't shy away from dark or hard things, like loneliness, sadness, anger, and disconnection.” During that time, the band’s lineup grew with the additions of Patter’s Joe Suihkonen, whose other band the Deals has featured collaborations from McCarthy and Moontype drummer Emerson Hunton, and Andrew Clinkman of Spirits Having Fun. “Getting asked to join this band was a beautiful thing for me,” says Clinkman. “It was exciting to be able to play with what was my favorite band already.”

The first show the new lineup played with NNAMDÏ at Metro in 2022 found them gelling instantly. “Immediately it felt like this is what it was supposed to be,” says McCarthy. Adding an extra guitar brought muscle and endless possibilities to their sound too. Still, the band wanted to nurture this newfound energy so they decided to skip tours and regular live shows for weekly jam sessions and practices. “The most important thing about this band is how we work on music in fleshing out a song together,” says Hunton. “With Joe and Andrew, once we realized that Margaret could just still bring in a shell of a track, we’d play it, not talk about it, and see where things land, there was a feeling that everything would work out.” These frequent meetups allowed everyone to get comfortable with each other and with playing music without hesitation. As Suihkonen puts it, “Writing songs with Moontype feels freer than any other band I've ever been in.”

One of the earlier songs is the lead single “Long Country,” which connects the sonic and emotional threads between the first iteration of Moontype and this new one. Over glistening guitars, McCarthy coos, “I wanna feel good every hour of the day.” Eventually, the track curls into something more menacing and eerie. The tempo slows and guitars leisurely strum as she sings, “The truth will hurt too much, the walls you built are strong enough / Nothing can set you free, so steel yourself, go forward blindly.” It eventually peaks into a blistering wall of sound and throughout, it’s unpredictable and thrilling—a testament to McCarthy’s vivacious melodic sensibilities. “There's something special about having Margaret’s bass and vocals as a starting point for a song,” says Clinkman. “It creates this inherent counterpoint to the song. That middle textural ground is so open to fill in, and provides an amazing opportunity for the rest of us to flesh that space out.”

“All of these songs span from my twenties,” says McCarthy. “There are changes that happen during every time of life, but definitely that one was full of upheaval.” Opener “How I Used to Dance” finds her reflecting on a younger version of herself. Over a flutter of strings, she sings, “Oh, how I used to dance / in my room, before I went to bed” reminiscing on nighttime walks in a small town and late nights with her best friend. “It’s a song about missing the past and grappling with how things have changed,” she says. “I had so many rituals for myself–small emotional moments that made me feel better. That era was kind of the beginning of me understanding what it feels like to feel good being alone. Now, it’s just a lot more comfortable for me.” Even when I Let the Wind Push Down On Me hones in on the mundane, McCarthy’s observant lyrics know where to find the light.

As McCarthy became more at ease with herself and her writing, the songs came together seamlessly. Even tracks that initially presented challenges, like the yearning single “Four Hands ii,” turned into North Stars once the band figured out where it should go. This ineffable creative rhythm gave them the confidence to hit the studio. First was a session in Chicago at Jamdek Studios where they’d track each tune as straightforwardly as possible. “This was our “Rock Band” session,” jokes Hunton. Then, they intentionally gave themselves a few months to sit with the material before they decamped to Maryland and New York to record with Katie Von Schleicher and Nate Mendelsohn. There, they worked on overdubs, vocals, and tweaking the arrangements. The distance between the two sessions allowed them to reimagine and recontextualize the material. “We made a record in Chicago. Then we went to Maryland and broke it,” says Suihkonen.

I Let the Wind Push Down On Me is an album of confronting dark emotions and coming out stronger. Where their debut Bodies of Water concerned itself with the healing powers of nature, this LP creates a colder world. On “Starry-Eyed,” McCarthy sings, “Borrowing a bottle I take sips / till I forget / What I started for / Oh / Why do I keep opening that door? / Every time I think it’s closed, there’s more.” While the song with its shoegaze-inflected riffs captures how things can feel heavy on your chest, it’s sung with such a lightness that it feels like a relief. “For that song, I took myself on a writing retreat, sat there, and wrote for a week, and that song actually came out of that.”

While so much of McCarthy’s writing came from periods of solitude, she found power through the creative process and her bandmates. “Writing songs can be a lonely endeavor, but I have these amazing bandmates,” she says. “When we’re together, it becomes something different and more powerful than when I was alone. The power that I'm trying to feel in my own self can be multiplied when we're all playing together. It feels like an extension of myself.”