Richard Edwards New Mood (Clear)

There was a song on 2020’s The Soft Ache and the Moon by Richard Edwards (Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s) called “Monkey,” which was first conceived as a sparse, haunting piano ballad that Edwards described as “strictly sexual/escapist in nature.” Once in the studio, however, it turned into a jangly, free-flowing, groove-based oddity, and became one of that album’s highlights and fan favorites. But, it still had some haunting to do, and its creator couldn’t leave that undone.

Edwards re-recorded “Monkey” after The Soft Ache and the Moon was done and dusted, and he called it “Monkey (b).” Accompanied only by Dave Palmer (Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann) and Perla Batalla (former Leonard Cohen collaborator), the thing received a different pair of wings. Edwards and Batalla croon and howl and whisper together, sounding otherworldly and fragile and inscrutable, as they do throughout the other seven songs on this collection, all recorded via distance during the first year of the pandemic and released to bridge the gap between 2020’s Soft Ache and 2022’s Ghost Electricity/Vampire Draw. It was “Monkey (b)” that prompted the trio to keep recording as such.

If anything–and whether it is over or not–the pandemic has seen Edwards enter into the most prolific phase of his two-decade songwriting career so far. Since dropping the Margot moniker in 2017, Edwards has released six full-length albums, two demo albums, and a plethora of retrospective material, which will be joined by a feature-length La Blogotheque-filmed documentary by this year’s end.

Unable to tour due to a chronic, undiagnosed abdominal disorder, Edwards will be working from home for the foreseeable future–but he’s making better, stranger, and more frequent records than ever, and New Mood is one of his most compelling entries yet.

1. Golden Moses
2. Monkey (b.)
3. Further 2 Fall
4. Everytime
5. Pineapple
6. None Of Us Became Anything
7. Love
8. With Half Your Heart