The Ex-Optimists, Drowned in Moonlight

Hey, Ex-Optimists crew; look, we need to talk. I mean, I love y’all — you know I do — but it’s starting to creep me out having you rummage around inside my head and pulling out all the damn sounds I loved back in college. It feels like some Inception-level shit, y’know? I’d appreciate it if you’d at least let me know when you’re going to do it; that’s just common courtesy…

Okay, so maybe that’s a little paranoid and crazy, I’ll admit, but listening to Drowned in Moonlight, I would swear band members Kelly Minnis (guitar/vocals), Mark “Wonko” Scarborough (guitars), Katie Keller (bass), and Colin Witucki (drums) have been sneaking into the back room of my house, the one where all the old CDs live, so they could go through my collection and.

And now that I’m thinking about it, that probably sounds nuts, as well. It’s just mind-blowing to hear all these ’90s indie influences I love all mashed together like this, from icons Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and Blur to relatively obscure folks like Arcwelder, The Miss Alans, and Mystery Machine. Best of all, the Ex-Ops merge it all damn near seamlessly, so it’s less like “oh, this song sounds exactly like Band X” and more like “oh, this song sounds like Band X plus Band Y plus a little bit of I don’t know what the fuck that is.”

See opener “Nights and Days of Rain,” for example; it starts off quiet and drifting, luring you into a sleepy haze, but then when it hits…oh, wow. Take My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and marry that overwhelming wall of guitar noise to some seriously heavy, thundering, Foo Fighters-like rhythms, then throw on some Snow Patrol-esque Britpop-y vocals, and this is what you’d likely get.

“Make it Through the Night” is similar, coming off like the perfect intersection between ’90s shoegaze, serious-minded Brit-rock, and fist-in-the-air arena rock, while “My New Normal,” on the other end of the spectrum, is less dreamy and more rootsy but still driving, making me think of Buffalo Tom. Minnis’ lyrics are surprisingly bleak and broken-down, to boot, despite the relatively upbeat-sounding tone, deftly sketching out a picture of a once-loving relationship that’s broken and crumbling to nothing; “We don’t touch like we used to / It’s a crying shame / We’re colleagues in our own home”.

“42 & Blustery” does a rootsy thing, as well, making me think of the roots-pop trend that came around with the advent of bands like Soul Asylum (who, I know, had already been around, but who got quite a bit better-known in the ’90s), Counting Crows, and the Gin Blossoms. At the same time, there’s a strong, strong resemblance to Hüsker Dü’s quieter, more playful moments, and that’s something I can always get behind.

The reference to Joe Jackson in the title of “The Joe Jackson Self-Destruct” feels apt, because the song does what Jackson himself always did so well, melding sharp-edged, punkish fury with astoundingly danceable, addictive power-pop. On top of that, the track reminds me — happily — of indie-rockers Poster Children, both in the vocal delivery and in the blazing, speeding fury of the song.

After several listens, I have to say that one of the best things about the band is Kelly Minnis’ vocals — they’re gentle and laidback, so soft and up-close that it seems like he’s hardly ever raising his voice above a quiet hush. It reminds me at points of the aforementioned long-gone ’90s band The Miss Alans (especially “Victoria”), or maybe Fountains of Wayne’s Chris Collingwood’s voice on “Valley Winter Song”. It’s the perfect complement to the dark, buzzing guitars on song like almost-title track “I Drowned in Moonlight” or the bombastic squall of “Nights and Days of Rain”.

Drowned in Moonlight finishes up with the epic-sized “Swept Away,” which sees the band cutting loose and giving free rein to their psych and dreampop tendencies at the same time, slowly and steadily building over the course of nearly 11(!) minutes into a colossal wall of noisy, messy, menacing, yet somehow still beautiful noise as Minnis quietly ruminates about the world being washed clean of the plague of humanity so nature can start again. Nihilism has rarely sounded so damn good.

Hrm. Y’know what? I changed my mind. Ex-Ops, y’all can dig around inside my skull of music collection, either one, any time — just so long as you keep making music like this. After Drowned in Moonlight, that seems like a pretty good deal…