ROOM FOR THE MOON LIVE (2LP) | VINYL RECORD (LP)

Kate Nv, Room for the Moon Live documents an ecstatic evening imagined up by the prismatic producer and performer Kate Nv. Recorded during a one-off show held a few years after the 2020 release of Room for the Moon, the album finds NV coloring inside and outside of her solo persona's expressionistic lines, and fronting an eclectic eight piece band that picks up and expands upon material from her whimsical and boundlessly intriguing sophomore album. For NV, Room for the Moon Live is more than just a yardstick marking the five years passed between the release of her sophomore album. The recording documents a vital, and since unrepeated, evening when the combined sound and soul of the album and members of her musical inner circle provide a space of respite during a particularly heavy and isolating period. "The most important theme of the concert was being a team - together," she says, "Playing music and trying to spread joy during dark times. It was a very important thing for me to do." The band was assembled by NV from a tight-knit group of musician friends and not infrequent collaborators, with it's core made up of members from Glintshake, the post-punk outfit she co-founded and has been playing with since 2012. Behind NV's light-footed marshalling, the ensemble began sketching the direction of the performance, imagining how they might redecorate some of Room's more synth-centric suites with new ideas and acoustic textures, aided as well by an openness to exploring improvisation, "jam" aesthetics, and, maybe most importantly, a free-wheeling spirit of fun. "The approach was something like: 'Guys, we're playing songs, but here we can go really wild,'" she recalls. "I had some 'musts' that we needed to recreate as closely as possible because it was crucial for the songs, but it was never a priority to put everyone into a cage of the originals. And I actually think that all of the tracks only gained something and sound more powerful than the original versions." NV spotlights "Marafon 15" and "Telefon" as particularly potent examples of the deeply grooving, groovy art-rock forces that invigorated the originals on stage. Even beyond these two tracks, all of the songs spread wider and flow freer, often clocking in at a minute, or multiple minutes, longer than the originals, as the band unhinges some of Room's more meticulously pop-adjacent arrangements. NV also points to the extended solo sections built into "Ça commence par" and the euphoric coda of "Lu Na," which took over during a session at band practice and then stuck around for good, as some of the most playfully activated moments on the record. Live albums, out of necessity or convention, more often than not follow an age-old pattern, chronicling one in a succession of evenings on tour with artists playing towards open-eared yet often blurry crowds in foreign cities that pass by in an impressionistic haze of places, spaces, images, and tastes. The performance channeled on Room for the Moon Live is something else entirely. It's music made by friends for friends, for healing and feeling, plugged into joy and boundless in generosity. Kate Nv's Room for the Moon Live arrives Friday, June 13, almost exactly five years to the day of the original album's release, as a limited double LP pressing and in unlimited digital editions.