The Moon City Masters – ‘Spinning Wheels’ / New Single

From the music to the visuals, The Moon City Masters (MCM) fully embody the revival aesthetic without musical entropy, each lyric carefully paired with an accompanying guitar lick and living up to the garish visual story their songs tell. Since emerging with their first single back in 2019, they have been nailing nostalgic, sun-soaked guitar riffs – the kind of music that favours summertime drives with the windows cranked down and the music cranked up.

Their newly released single, “Spinning Wheels”, is another tantalising peek into their world. Opening with a country-style, riffy intro, the song slots itself in seamlessly with the rest of MCM’s singles; leaning heavily into bass-slapping funk-rock, inflected with clean solos played high up on the guitar neck through impassioned grimaces. With vocals that fire on all cylinders, MCM have a primal driver in their music that is often missing from modern rock. Also, that’s not double tracking of the singer’s vocals – that’s his identical twin harmonising faultlessly.

It is almost as difficult to tell Jordan and Talor Steinberg apart as it is to differentiate between their songs and classic rock hits from the 70s and early 80s, the likes of which include T-Rex, Eagles, Big Star, and Rush.

If the range exhibited in their singles is anything to go by, MCM embrace the sway between genres that rock music used to embody more freely in the 70s. Take it as a green flag that they will continue to inflect their mastery of jangle pop with peripheral genre sounds, rarefying their repertoire over time.

Paradoxically, classic rock as MCM play it goes against the grain of the zeitgeist. The lyrics are less pontificative, in favour of all-out positivity. Don’t come here to take a good, hard look at yourself, but rather to escape deep reflection. Their message is overwhelmingly positive in the face of a tumultuous world order, “Now the world keeps on changing / it’s all touch and go / we’ll keep rearranging / cos the only thing I know / time keeps on slipping away.”

The visuals are zany and the hair is luxurious, but the boys are not in costume. The Steinberg brothers are forging an identity in the music they make, which is as immutable to them as apple pie is to America, or fireworks to the Fourth of July.

The more jaded among us might shirk at the dazzling light of the brothers’ smiles, and the sunny take-life-as-it-comes message of their music, but they mean it. Having recently told guitar.com that they have no plans to release an album and are instead revelling in releasing singles every few months, they embody a love for making music separate from harboured aspirations of becoming run-of-the-mill rock and roll stars. While everyone else is forcing innovation, scraping the bottom of the bowl in search of a ‘Eureka’ moment, MCM are lovingly excavating the gleaming gold dust of classic rock, and shredding for pleasure as rainbows erupt from their guitar strings.

Pastiche in the best way possible, MCM present a suite of ten songs that stand alone as much as together. Notable singles including “Takin’ it Back” and “No Warning” present a harmonic balance between simple catchy words and electric guitar. Their messaging builds on their previous single, “Draw the Line”, where pitchy lyrics sing, “If it ain’t feeling fine / walk away don’t waste your time / draw the line.” The auditory positivity is enough to trigger an existential crisis on the commute home from your poorly paid corporate job. But delivered through robust nostalgia and whiney guitar riffs, it transports you to an idealised time of long hair and flares, when van life was out of sight, man.

When it all boils down, life is simple and MCM know it. And the meaning of life? Meh, the answer is probably hidden in a guitar solo somewhere.