Taco ‘Bout It: The Lawsuits Album Review: Moon Son

The opening track pulls you in softly, like a phone call from an old friend. This track immediately piqued my interest as it felt familiar enough to identify emotionally. There was also an age to it, a timelessness that beckons to your soul. It’s a great opener as it makes you yearn to sit and explore an auditory world of sound with the band.

The following three tracks boast the range of the songwriting for the band. The tracks move from a party to a lonesome stroll to an enigmatic view of the cosmos. Each track surprises the listener at how deftly each song traverses an ever changing landscape of creativity.

The fourth track “wasted”, serves as ample flirtation with where the album has taken the listener thus far. It is a great melding of the elements covered in the previous three tracks and really feels like another stop along an auditory journey.

Moving forward through the next few tracks,  the landscape of The Lawsuits song writing felt as though not a single genre of music failed to play a part in the creative process. Elements from everything from electro to indie to funk to Americana further diversify a truly unique sound and song crafting.

The track “Moon Son”, is a wonderful display of the incredible talent in Vanessa Winters. Her voice softens and floats through to your soul more so on this track than previous tracks. It’s a constant complementary ebb and flow throughout the album between Vanessa and the raspy, welcoming vocals of Brian  Dale Allen Strouse. “Moon Son” highlights this symbiosis of vocals by allowing Vanessa to be as equally welcoming on the following track “To End War”.

The album then takes us back to the start of the journey on the final track “Hail Storm”. The final track as welcoming as the first, is an excellent example of a song writer honing their craft. “I know I’m floating in a foreign place, I wanna say something clever but I lost the taste. You’re a fool to claim a stake in what you didn’t create, out to see the start to appreciate the end”…

As someone who has new music thrown at them daily and has album after album submitted for review, I felt the need to handle this album personally. There are so many different genres and despite many artists claiming to not want to be pigeon holed into a single genre, this album genuinely reflects this attitude while simultaneously captivating the listener and exploring the world The Lawsuits live in. Although I have yet to see this band live, I can only hope their live performance is as intriguing as their album and that they remember that live music is just as much about exploration as the studio is. Be sure to check them out when they come through town and hopefully we can share a bourbon together along the way!