We were thrilled to see Moonlight Thief reach the top of our reviews pile this morning. We listened to their track 4AM a while ago, and now they’re back with a new track, Slip Away, and we’ve been taking a good long listen here at Send Me Your Ears today.
Slip Away is a song about broken relationships, sorrow and heartbreak. Not an uncommon theme for any style of music but Emily Küpers vocals and passionate delivery help to make this theme feel new.
Moonlight Thief are Emily Küpers (vocals, acoustic guitars), Alexander Almering (electric guitars, drums) who formed in 2021 as part of a school project.
Slip Away starts gently on strummed acoustic guitar with some single piano notes and an interesting use of shaker.
When the vocals come in, we were reminded why we loved Moonlight Thief’s previous submission so much. Emily’s vocals are just charming. The passion and emotion that she puts into her performance seem effortless. We believe we drew comparisons to Dolores O’Riordan and Alanis Morrisette in our previous review and we stand by that here too. Emily’s voice has elements of these two supreme vocalists, whilst also managing to stand her ground comfortably as herself. The added occasional harmonies back up Emily’s voice well.
There’s something about the note choices and patterns of the piano that made us think of Bruce Hornsby and the Range. Simple but effective note choices that bring the song into a realm above just a basic guitar strummed song.
Slip Away stands at around 5 minutes long which may be too long to be considered for commercial air play, but we feel that local stations will support this talented up and coming duo and we also feel that this particular song would be a great song to pitch for a sync deal – perhaps in the background of a scene in a TV show.
Slip Away starts gently, builds and builds and then drops back to almost nothing again at the end. it’s effectiveness, in our view, is the passionate vocal delivery and the interesting drum fills.
From a production perspective, a boost around 60-70Hz would enhance the thump of the kick drum and bring it more in line with the snare track. There is a slight resonance in the acoustic guitar so a thin and precise cut around 192Hz in that track might be an idea. A noticeable difference could be achieved in the overall volume of the track by adding a light compressor to the output and increasing the make up gain, maybe by as much as 7dBs.
Slip Away is a gentle indie pop/rock/folk track with a passionate vocal delivery. Moonlight Thief are currently working on their debut album and we’re super-excited to be privileged to hear snippets in advance. We urge you to add Moonlight Thief to your playlist today.