Columbus, Ohio-based indie/Americana outfit Moviola has released music video for the title track from their forthcoming album, Broken Rainbows, out Sept. 3 via Anyway Records.
Made up of Jake Housh, Ted Hattemer, Scotty Tabachnik, Greg Bonnell, and Jerry Dannemiller, Moviola was begun by Jake Housh in 1993. Initially, a loud, fuzzed-out band, over time, Moviola transformed into an imaginative, inimitable band reminiscent of the unrestricted creativity of The Mekons and Pink Floyd. Over their almost three-decade career, Moviola has released 10 records and myriad 7” singles.
Talking about Broken Rainbows, Dannemiller says, “This album feels like a culmination of our collective wits.”
While Jake Housh adds, “There is a certain directness to it. The songwriting is more assured and topical, matched only by clarity in the production. The lyrics read like a personal narrative of someone who’s gone missing, but it could also represent a broader loss of things like the idea of a melting pot, unions, social services, and just plain old civility. The winter imagery of the chorus and ‘broken rainbows with only shades of blue’ seems like an apt metaphor for this sad time in American history.”
Moviola has shared the stage with Flaming Lips, Red Red Meat, Califone, Superchunk, Bettie Serveert, Grifters, Acetone, Wussy, the Clean, Guided By Voices, and Dub Narcotic Sound System, along with a host of others.
“Broken Rainbows” opens on a drawling guitar, followed by the entry of an oozing organ and sparkling piano. Reminiscent of The Band, the crying colors of the pedal steel guitar intertwines with pealing, rolling guitars to dovetail into twangy washes of country music fused with hints of Americana hues.
Nasal, lilting vocals imbue the lyrics with mellow pastoral timbres.
“The leaves are gone / The birds have flown / And the sky’s in on it too / Broken rainbows / With only shades of blue.”
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The video, directed by Michael Ivey and shot in West Virginia and Columbus, is simultaneously unpretentious and charmingly self-assured.
Rustic yet dripping with distinctive elegance, “Broken Rainbows” delivers flows of melancholy, nostalgia, and lamentation—a sad memoir for present circumstances.
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