Some records politely ask for your attention; the “Moss E.P” from MOSS just sets a small, contained fire on your coffee table and waits for you to feel the heat. It is an immediate and strangely familiar atmosphere, like a half-remembered David Lynch dream scored with the staticky pulse of 90s trip-hop. Bee Davison’s voice cuts through this hypnotic haze, not as a lament, but as a declaration, while the electronics and guitars from Moss churn below like a restless sea. You can almost smell the ozone and damp concrete; it’s the sound of a story that starts long after the sun has gone down.
The whole affair is ignited by “Angst,” which builds a world inside a pressure cooker. Bee Davison’s vocal is a live wire thrashing in a puddle, wrestling an internal fire she calls “shame.” The electronics and guitars from Moss chew at the scenery, the sound of grinding teeth cast in metal. It brought to mind, of all things, the peculiar tension of a Bergman film, where the quietest moments hold the most spectacular violence. The agonizing countdown isn’t just to a confrontation; it’s to a total system failure, even while dangerously “enamored by your wilderness.”
Then, the furnace door swings open. “The East” is the fallout, a deliberate demolition. Here, sorrow isn’t something to be hidden; it’s a spectacle, a neon sign blinking “I survived you.” When Davison commands “Anna… now come watch me cry,” it’s a power move of the highest order. It’s not a request for sympathy but a summons. With Buffy Hughes’ cello sawing at the foundations, the track feels like a slow, stately burning, turning betrayal into a beautiful, terrible pyre. It’s the strength of someone deciding to re-enact their own tragedy with themselves as the hero.
By “U.F.S,” the blaze has become a bonfire party for outcasts. This is the EP’s hedonistic heart, a gleeful two-fingered salute to doing the wrong thing because it feels fundamentally right. It’s a pact sealed with a witchy glee, a conscious choice to “crash this boat” with a grin. The track crackles with the shared energy of those who find community in the obscene, a joyful noise that’s both a siren call and a warning shot.
But the embers settle into a grey, melancholic dust with “The Age We Live In.” The fire is no longer personal; it’s a consuming, world-eating thing, fanned by “wicked tongues.” The song holds a profound sadness, a lament for a world intent on setting itself alight. Davison’s final, devastating confession—”we’ll all catch fire ’cause I’m made of snow”—is the release’s most fragile and piercing moment. It’s the quiet understanding that in a culture of combustion, gentleness is the first casualty.
MOSS has built something hypnotic with this debut. It crawls with a Lynchian unease, yet offers these pockets of defiant, glorious warmth. After the last note fades, you’re left with the faint smell of smoke and a single, unsettling question: are we here to tend the flame, or to become it?
