Andy Crofts shows off his strongest suit.
Andy Crofts is quite the polymath.
The lead songwriter and singer for The Moons, Crofts was also a full-time member of Paul Weller’s band until recently, having to step back for personal reasons.
In over a decade working with the musician, he contributed to songwriting while also playing bass (among many other instruments) in the live arena. Crofts is also a noted visual artist, with prints adorning The Libertines’ hotel in Margate, and he’s even released his own photography book. Finally, he runs a record label (Colorama Records) which has released albums by Teenage Waitress and The Lunar Towers.
Yet he would surely agree that music is his day job, and in October of last year he performed a special solo show at the legendary 100 Club on Oxford Street in Central London, which was recorded for posterity. Unlike other live albums, it summons up mental images of the gig itself – whether you know the venue or if you were there – with a claustrophobic, contained sound.
With four studio albums to draw from, The Moons’ back catalogue makes up the majority of the set but the pattern remains consistent: Crofts draws inspiration from the Great English Songwriters such as Ray Davies, Paul McCartney and Weller himself. There is a pastoral, melancholy whimsy throughout.
Whether it’s the jauntiness of Chinese Whispers, the wistfulness of How Long? or the sad reflection of The Lone Wolf, it’s a well he returns to successfully, as the accompanying string quartet convey (with which there was only one short rehearsal prior to the show) the respective moods. They add a sense of scale to Far Away, sweeping the song skywards, while delivering an appropriately lovelorn timbre to Maybe I’m The Perfect Man (For You), always adding another dimension and assisting the strong melodies.
The stand-out track is Westway (‘Away from the city and the smoke’) which ironically Crofts admits to never having played live, while his cover of John Lennon’s Isolation (originally released during the first lockdown in 2020) is faithful, capturing the strained vocal delivery of the original.
In the absence of a Best Of collection by The Moons, this album is a succinct summary of the career of one of Britain’s hardest-working musicians.