Holly and Dave. Dave and Holly. We’re practically on first name terms now. I’ve never actually met The Lovely Eggs, but there’s something so disarmingly cheeky and endearing about the couple and their music that they feel like old friends. Besides, if they recorded as Ross and Blackwell, they’d sound like a branded chutney, and that’s far too prosaic for their psychedelic space rock, as unpretentious as they are.
I Am Moron, produced again by Dave Fridmann (as with their last, This Is Eggland, from 2017) is their sixth. It’s got their signature fuzzed out shouty singalong sounds, like the anti-bourgeois shopping list Insect Repellent, monolithic chants in You’ve Got The Balls and Krautrock swooshes of Bear Pit.
This time around though, their lyrical concerns also focus on their latest obsession, the Mars One program, where you can buy a one-way ticket to the Red Planet. They do seem rather keen. The Mothership is a space ballad with blips and bleeps augmenting Ross’ gorgeous harmonies and pleas to sleep alone.
This introspection can also be found on the melancholic New Dawn where the Eggs deconstruct the entire ecosystem to see how we all fit in, and if there’s to be any semblance of a future on Earth.
Whether earthbound or on a rocket to other planets, The Lovely Eggs aren’t making any giant leaps sonically on this album, but they hopscotch between genres and ideas beautifully. We are all moron.