Here’s the story of my first listen of Deastro‘s new album Moondagger:

1. Chance upon album, vaguely recall positive mentioned of Deastro
2. Insert album in CD player
3. Instant grin, room reverberates with explosive energy, evening transformed within 30 seconds, etc

This is a first listen album. It’s not a grower – it’s all there, hitting you smack in the face right from the word go. Fortunately the instant appeal doesn’t dissipate over time – I’ve been giving it plenty of spins over the last couple of weeks and it continues to stand up as a great pop album.

Deastro is a one-man project belonging to Randolph Chabot Jr, apparently all self-produced and home recorded. Perhaps due to this creation process, there’s a delicious dichotomy in the music he creates – all at once the songwriting is human, personal, genuine and even unassuming while the sounds are frequently colossal, epic, almost stadium-esque.

The Deastro sound is defined by layers and layers of synths and Randolph’s swampy, ethereally treated vocals, but instead of rigid, robotic drum programming most of the rhythm section is propelled by live drums and bass, which give the songs a lot of their energy and help further both the expansiveness of the sound and the personality of the recording.

I’m pretty fascinated by the lyrics – the ones I can make out anyway. Randolph (from what I can gather) seems to hold Christian convictions which appear to permeate the song content. References to God are frequent (“Day of Wonder”, “Vermillion Plaza”) with my favourite instance being the bonus track “The Shaded Forests” as he yelps out the Psalm-derived refrain “whom shall I fear?” followed by “we’re gonna make it home!” … in the wrong hands it might be another biblically plundered cliche, but when he sings it it’s extraordinarily compelling. Naturally the album isn’t confined to a single subject matter – it seems to span all manner of topics of interest in Randolph’s worldview. Now to find a lyric sheet so I can actually decipher them.

Seriously, get the album – I love it to bits, and I think you will too. It’s an “up” album – try it on a Friday night or the start of a roadtrip. It’s epic.

Listen

• Parallelogram (mp3)