Moose Blood - 'I Don't Think I Can Do This Anymore' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Have I Told You Enough

2. Talk In Your Sleep

3. Just Outside

4. You Left In The Worst Way

5. All The Time

6. Can We Stay Like This

7. Pull Me From The Floor

8. Walk All Day With You

9. Such A Shame

10. Promise Me

11. It's Too Much

The 9th of March is a day marked in my calendar that I have been excited for for a long long time, it sees the release of Moose Blood's third studio album 'I Don't Think I can Do This Anymore' - and here at 3 Songs & Out we just couldn't wait, so much so that we've bagged ourselves a copy pre-release!

As always we would like to extend a massive thank you to Moose Blood, Hopeless Records and PublicityPR for the opportunity.

In 2012 a garage in Kent saw the formation of Moose Blood, one of the most promising English up and coming acts. With a sound not too dissimilar to American Football, Brand New, or A Will Away they quickly found success with their first EP - 'Moving Home', unlike Bukowski Moose Blood are not growing old, merely... maturing.

In an era where a majority of musicians seem to view writing good songs as low down the list of attributes required for a successful career, Canterbury quartet Moose Blood are that rarest of things: a band who let the songs do the talking. Bursting on to the scene in 2012, they solidified themselves as one of the UK’s hottest exports across two albums (2014’s debut full-length ‘I’ll Keep You In Mind, From Time To Time’ and 2016’s ‘Blush’) which took the best of American mid-west Emo and updated it with a quintessentially British twist.

The latter of those two records proved to be a breakout success, crashing the UK top 10 and propelling the band on to the main stages of Reading and Leeds Festival and Lollapalooza as well sold out shows at L.A’s legendary Troubadour, New York’s Bowery Ballroom and London’s KOKO – to say nothing of the Kerrang! and Alternative Press Music Awards nominations they’ve picked up on the way. On the 13th of April 2016 Moose Blood were signed to Hopeless Records, the very same label who will be releasing 'I Don't Think I Can Do This Anymore'.

Tasked with opening the album is one of the more recent singles 'Have I told You Enough' which sets the tone for the record - powerful, both lyrically and musically. I can only imagine what it is like to be in a touring band, away from family for so long. This is an issue that is addressed somewhat personally by vocalist/guitarist Eddy Brewerton in melancholic lead single 'Talk In Your Sleep'.

“We’re incredibly grateful to be in this band,” offers ever self-effacing frontman Brewerton, “but there are some aspects of this journey that have been really hard. Especially being away from home so much, for me it got me to a point where I was questioning if I still wanted to be in Moose Blood at all. I think we all were really, and that’s where the title of the record comes from.”

I personally feel like these comments are reflected in the lyrical genius of 'Just Outside' and 'You Left In The Worse Way' - a pair of tracks that give something resembling an insight in to the mindframe of Eddy. A friend once described Moose Blood to me as there being something special about this band, the way the artists pour themselves into their music like very few others I have seen and this is evident in tracks 'All The Time' and 'Walk All Day With You'.

'Pull Me From The Floor' and 'Such A Shame' are songs that feel like they would be welcome on 'I'll Keep You In Mind From Time To Time', 'Blush', or anything new - in short they are a testament to the sound of Moose Blood.

Rounding out the album is a 4 minute rollercoaster of emotions in the form of 'It's Too Much'. The lyrics aren’t clichéd excuses for emotion, more like musical confessions and letters to the people in their lives, even more than that though, it is comprehensively Moose Blood’s most sonically complete and accomplished body of work to date.