Mike Rheinheimer recorded most of Moonlight Passes On alone across layered sessions at Submarine Sound Studio in Rochester. It's the first Attic Abasement album in a decade, and it returns to the one-person-in-a-room approach of the project's earliest records. The guitars hang loose and a little sideways, often just strummed rhythm with pedal steel drifting through. Rheinheimer's voice stays low and conversational, the melodies winding around chords rather than sitting neatly on top of them.
The writing leans toward Silver Jews and early Pavement: plainspoken, a bit cracked, delivered like he's thinking it through as he sings. "Mirrored in Plastic" stretches out over long sighing lines. "Bruised Water Moon" picks up Pacific Northwest indie and Midwestern emo, the pedal steel giving it a faint Western tint. "T-Shirt" has glinting guitar that drifts off-centre. "Hunting Space" builds slowly around a quiet drum pulse. The production leaves space between the parts, somewhere between basement tape hiss and open air.
Rheinheimer has described his process as meditative, grabbing chunks of imagery while searching for a melody. The lyrics land as small confessions, self-aware but never laboured. It's modest, a little weary, and it doesn't try to be more than what it is.
