Luna Honey
A cycle of songs that commenced recording on October, 13 on a Friday in 2017 & slated for release on July 13 (also a Friday), DC’s Luna Honey share an early listen to “Honey” featured off their upcoming album Peace Will Grind You Down from BLIGHT. Records. The core group of married couple Maura Pond & Levi Christian Flack specialize in conceiving sounds that seek the source of purpose, personal reexaminations with a heavy & visceral sound that reflects these processes of praxis & actualization. The group captures that reflected evening glow & translates it into cathartic arrangements that casts the luminescence of night into musical tides of reckoning & realizations.
Taken off the upcoming Peace Will Grind You Down album; Maura, Levi & company observe the systems & cycles of change on “Evolution”. The moody percussion steps slog forward with foreboding chords & bass lines that are built around Maura’s reiterations of and it’s over that remind us how precious & fleeting both the good & bad times are in our lives. The track “Relinquish” is built off a heart-beat rhythm structure that shatters the glass of delusion with artistically applied instruments of dissonances that deconstruct the complications that arise within the conundrum of existence. The last teaser Luna Honey leaves us with is the sparse “Honey” that reverberates like a goth-lounge ballad echoing off the chamber walls of a hive. The arrangement of “Honey” retains a charged minimalism that feels like a song that would be heard in a dystopian desert set slice of cinema that mixes the feeling of an unseen menace coupled with a detached sense of peace.
We had the chance to catch up with both of Luna Honey’s Maura Pond & Levi Christian Flack in the following insightful interview session:
Describe how you all formed Luna Honey, along with the inspiration for the moniker.
Levi: The idea for the name came to us while we were on our honeymoon in Colombia. In Spanish, honeymoon is luna de miel, and everyone who found out it was our honeymoon when we were there would just get so excited and was really sweet to us. It became our rallying cry. Our way of saying fuck it, let’s do something crazy! Swim in a bioluminescent lagoon in the pitch black in the middle of nowhere where there might be things that would eat you? Sure, why not? Luna de miel! It’s sappy, but I think the band was our way of committing to keeping that openness to adventure going. Luna Honey felt like the perfect name because to me it sounded both sweet and mysterious.
Maura: Before then, we’d been messing around playing music with some friends for a few months, but I was still having a hard time opening up and figuring out what to write about. Songwriting feels vulnerable to me and the idea of putting all my feelings and thoughts out there for everyone felt unnatural and uncomfortable. But Levi is so supportive and feels like such a safe space, it was kinda like, okay, maybe if we just focus on the two of us and we try to write a full album’s worth of material in the next year and we don’t worry about what happens beyond that, we’ll be okay.
Meeting Benjamin Schurr is really what pushed everything forward. He was able to get me to stop worrying so much on how I wasn’t a good enough musician or whatever and just write some dang songs. He produced the album and brought so much to the songs and we had such great chemistry together, that when it came time to try and translate the album for a live show, it just didn’t feel right to try and have someone else play all those parts. Since then, we’ve added baritone sax player Madeline Billhimer and if I have one regret about this whole thing it’s that we can’t start over and have her on the album with us. There’s something about the particular combination of the four of us that has that magic spark and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to play with everybody. It’s become such a deeply rewarding part of my life. There’s a lot of love there.
What elements of war & peace informed the creation of the album Peace Will Grind You Down?
Maura: The album title comes from the fourth song on the album, which is about the different things we try to pursue to find internal peace. Especially after Trump was elected, DC hasn’t exactly been the most cheerful place. You look around at the world and it’s easy to slip into nihilism. But nihilism is a lie and I really believe you have to resist that way of thinking if you want to have anything that resembles happiness, let alone any kind of progress in the world. So there is still a hopeful element to the song that even when we can’t see the purpose and meaning in things, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I hope.
On a more directly personal note, I’ve been lucky enough to have a steady, professional job I enjoy with good benefits for over a decade. While I am very grateful and wouldn’t change that, there’s something about being comfortable and contented in one area of your life that makes it really easy to lose track of time. Like I should have been making music and creating art this whole time, but it was really easy to just keep putting off until one day you realize you’ve lost a decade. No one is going to tell you when to start working on the impractical things you love, and our lives are so full of distraction you really have to fight not to lose those parts of yourself. I do think we are in a constant battle each day to not become jaded, or too overwhelmed to care, or overtaken by negativity and cynicism, or too busy to appreciate the time we have. So I guess that’s the war.
I have a real fondness for phrases that can simultaneously evoke two opposing ways of looking at something. Being ground down isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. Sure, there’s grind like don’t let the bastards grind you down, but you also can grind a knife to make it sharper or a stone to make it smoother. I feel that way in my relationships in my life that I have now that I’m in my 30s—that time and trial and error has smoothed over my rough bits and helped me grow in how I relate to others. Sometimes it’s a good thing to lose pieces of yourself. Personal peace might have a cost, but it might be one you should think about paying.
What does peace even mean? We supposedly live in a peaceful society, but what that really means is it’s comfortable for a limited number of people and everyone else is scraping to get by or actively suffering and we’re using up our natural resources to support our lifestyles. Is that peace? I don’t know. Maybe we’re just moving the violence and suffering that are the results of how we live to where we don’t have to see it. And maybe that really is as good as it gets. But I can’t quite get comfortable that there’s this huge, exploitative, economic machinery that exists so that I can go to yoga class and perfect my inner self, you know? It would be hard not to reflect on that while chasing down what things are supposed to give us a sense of meaning and purpose, especially living in DC for over a decade and seeing how the working class have been almost entirely forced out of the city for more bourgeois people and establishments. It feels really wrong.
Why do you all feel there is a general aversion internationally to the pursuit of peace & respect for all living beings?
Levi: That aversion is called greed. As a species we are way too quick to take advantage of each other to get what we want. There isn’t enough empathy. Some countries have it down, but why would they stick their neck out for the ones that don’t? Nobody can claim to be pursuing peace when they have their finger on the trigger.
Maura: We’re just scared murder-beasts at the end of the day and the world is one big prisoner’s dilemma. Nobody gets to be pure—we all have a little blood on our hands in one way or another. Exploitation and suffering are woven into the fabric of our society and maybe all societies. And if that’s the case and if you are really attached to this idea that you are a good person to cope you’re stuck with either dehumanizing the people you’re hurting or blaming them. The beautiful thing about human cooperation is that together we can do more than we could alone, but this is also what makes us so dangerous. Our trade off for being able to make art and medicine and education is that we also can make nuclear weapons and genocide and war. And we really can’t splinter off from the collective as much as we like to believe we can because no one lives in a vacuum. So it’s hard to know how to change the direction of the group as a whole if you don’t like where you’re all going. We all have a pretty good idea of what exploitation and violence look like, but it’s hard to image the opposite, let alone all work towards going there together.
Describe the creation of the striking slow-burn of “Honey” & all of the stark imageries that are ripped straight out of the Inquisition.
Levi: The original vocal melody, strummed guitar and bass line came out of nowhere when Maura and I were improvising one night in my basement and something just clicked. It was our first song we finished together, it really just kinda wrote itself. On our initial demo our cat started rolling around on some papers near the mic and when we shared it with a few friends, our buddy Erik Sleight told us it sounded like crackling fire. That’s where the inspiration for those clicking noises comes from.
Maura: Some of the build you hear I think is part of the natural build you have when you’re improvising—in the beginning you are still feeling the song out but by the end when you’ve got your footing, you can really let go. Since we left the structure and melody pretty much as is from the improvised basement session, I think there’s still echoes of that energy in there, which fits with the subject matter. Also lots of the magic came from Ben sifting through different sounds and textures from our recording session and arranging them to help it build in intensity. That little melancholy guitar bit? A small section lifted from a longer bit of improvisation. The weird cracking noise Levi mentioned? Walnuts from our backyard slowly being cracked in a vice that belonged to Levi’s grandfather. The extra ch-ch-ch-ch on the cymbal is because we put one of my necklaces on it to make it rattle around more. We were having a lot of fun playing with sound and just experimenting with things around the house to see what kinds of moods they evoked.
As for the lyrics, most of the songs on the album are really about two things at once and that’s true for “Honey” as well. It’s part love song and part about finding your voice and confronting your fears. The lyric that’s a bit hard to catch is lead me to the auto da fe, which you are totally right, is a reference to the Spanish Inquisition and their acts of faith, or burning people at the stake. Between getting married and taking on that relentless, negative internal monologue that’s shut down my ability to be creative with other people, the previous year felt very much like willingly walking into the fire. Like I feel sick to my stomach when I realize people are going to actually hear this album, which is really silly because I think it’s great, but I still feel that way regardless. Playing a live show? Completely terrifying. Committing to a person f-o-r-e-v-e-r? Oh boy, scary stuff. But I believe music and love can be transcendent. And while our fears can be legitimate and we shouldn’t ignore them, we shouldn’t be ruled by them either. I want that burn. I want to lose my old fearful self and find out what’s on the other side. It feels like there’s some kind of truth there that needs exploring.
In beekeeping, smoke helps keep the bees docile and calm because it masks the pheromones that the bees use to communicate with each other that something is wrong. There’s a reference to that smoke in the song. I’ve felt a bit like a sleepy worker bee who is waking up but is still finding my own voice.
Activists & artists that are currently keeping you all inspired?
Maura: I got to spend the summer and fall traveling and talking to union members around the United States and even though none of them will ever be famous and are just normal people, their collective stories and seeing how many people are willing to stick their necks out for what’s right has really been giving me life. That and the anniversary of MLK’s death and the sanitation workers’ strike has me rereading some of King’s old essays and speeches, which are definitely worth the time to read in his own words if you haven’t before. As for art, the whole BLIGHT. crew is just inspiring to be around because there’s so much good music being made right now.
What has been on constant rotation lately for you all musically?
Maura: This sounds like self-promotion, but we started doing these monthly playlists with the other artists on BLIGHT. and that’s pretty much been all I’ve been listening to. It’s neat to hear what other people you’re working with are drawing inspiration from. That and Everything’s Fine, the new album from Jean Grae and Quelle Chris, which you should really stop whatever you are doing right now and just go listen to if you claim to love yourself. Oh and Among the Rocks and Root’s new album, Raga, which is heavy and brutal and emotional in all the right ways and my friends are probably tired of hearing me talk about it. We also saw Irreversible Entanglements recently and they completely blew me away.
Levi: I have been listening to everything Rowland S. Howard. Especially I’m Never Gonna Die Again by These Immortal Souls, which is an absolutely fantastic album. Filth by Swans is currently on our record player. I’ve had the Swoll CD in constant rotation in my car, because I freakin’ love that record. I’ve also been lucky enough to be able to sit in on some of Ben’s recording sessions at studio BLIGHT. and there’s some really exciting and inspiring music being made right now.
Summer dreams, autumn schemes?
Maura: We’re planning to go on tour this summer, because apparently you’re never too old to run off and join a rock band. I think we’d all like to have another album’s worth of material by the fall now that we have this cool duck sound to work with with Madeline’s sax. We already have the beginnings of a number of songs just from jamming together, so I’d love to hole up for a few days together and really refine those.
Luna Honey’s upcoming album Peace Will Grind You Down will be available July 13 via BLIGHT. Records.
