Moviola continues to find hope in trying times

It’s fitting, considering the times, that the new Moviola album, Earthbound (Dromedary Records), begins with foreboding skies overhead. The initial threat surfaced in “Dark Cloud” doesn’t linger long, however, and by the song’s midpoint Greg Bonnell is singing about the need to make a change and “find a better you,” defiantly moving forward against the surrounding headwinds.

“Even though the songs on the record deal with certain aspects of [this moment], and there’s a world-weariness to it, it’s not resignation,” said Jerry Dannemiller, who joined Bonnell and Ted Hattemer for a mid-August interview at Gemut Biergarten. (Jake Housh and Scotty Tabachnick round out Moviola’s lineup.) “There’s a certain optimism to it, along with this reality that we’re living in really fucked up times. And with that, you can either crawl in a hole or you can make art, and the five of us choose to make art.”

While the album is dotted with the occasional political song – “Hillbilly Effigy,” for one, is a clear shot across the bow of Vice President JD Vance – it casts a far wider net, the musicians wrangling with everything from the regrets that can accrue over a lifetime to an awareness that our days on this planet are finite. Then there’s the loping title track, which touches on the importance of dealing with reality rather than existing solely in the clouds. “It’s almost encouraging or pleading with someone to come back down to Earth a little bit,” said Hattemer, who will join his bandmates for a record release show at Used Kids on Saturday, Aug. 23, supported by Long Odds.

“Earthbound,” which hinges on the line “it’s okay now to be here on the ground,” could also double as a later-career statement of purpose for Moviola, which at the start of its run in the early to mid-90s flirted with a larger breakthrough, playing shows alongside the Flaming Lips, Red Red Meat and Bettie Serveert, and performing in front of Matador Records founder Gerard Cosloy at a New York City showcase. “We had a really charmed life, I think, as a young band,” Dannemiller said. 

Thess days, the musicians sound comparatively grounded in their sense of expectation, reflecting on the idea that commercial success at this point appears relatively unlikely – “I mean, that would be the oddest thing in the world to me,” Hattemer said – and yet completely undimmed in their creative ambitions. “In a way, we’re more ambitious when it comes to the recording,” Bonnell said.

Emerging in 1993 as what Dannemiller described as “an aggressively noisy” five-piece, Moviola has continued to evolve in the more than three decades its members have been making music together, delving deeper into weatherbeaten heartland rock on more recent albums such as Earthbound and Broken Rainbows, from 2021. Part of this creative restlessness, the musicians said, can be attributed to having five members who contribute equally to the process, writing songs, singing, and swapping instruments.

“It’s really a byproduct of having those five equal voices,” Dannemiller said. “Not many bands that I know of have five people writing and singing lead vocals. And that’s intentional in that we all want to hear everybody’s songs, because at the root of it we’re all friends. So, Greg writes songs, and then Ted writes different songs than Greg, and then I write different songs than Jake or Scotty. And then it’s fun to play on somebody else’s song, and to be in a band together with all of them. It’s this constant evolution where you don’t have that one person dictating the creative direction.”

And yet, there are throughlines that exist within Earthbound, which Hattemer attributed in part to the reality that the five have shared similar life experiences in emerging to this point. “We’re all guys in our 50s or 60s, and we all have kids,” he said. “Some of us have gone through at least one marriage or are working on a second or a third. So, it’s not like you’re not going to come out with something completely, wildly different.”

One of these connective threads reflects the sense of perspective that comes from having lived a full life, which surfaces in lines that acknowledge how quickly the days can slip away (“We’re losing time,” the band sings on “Long Gone”) and the idea that the musicians are now closer to the end of the show than the opening scenes (“Bring the lights up,” they offer on “Stage Wave”). These songs rest alongside more tongue-in-cheek turns such as the pummeling “Stunt Yer Growth,” a scabbed over, self-described “knuckle dragger” that opens with Dannemiller spinning “endless tales of how it was” as a means of needling those who relentlessly cloak themselves in nostalgia.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with remembering the past – we all do it – but it’s another thing to completely dwell on it all the time,” Dannemiller said. “The idea of experience, of being at our advanced age, there’s this ability to speak in that voice that’s a little tongue-in-cheek, a little bit dry, a little bit world weary. But there’s also a degree of optimism that only comes from being on this planet for so many years. … And I think that allows us the perspective to be like, ‘Things are horrible now, but maybe this too shall pass.’ Or let’s at least hope.”