Sometimes you just want to make music with your friends. And sometimes those friends are great musicians. Long Dark Moon returns with “Systems,” the first single from the forthcoming cassette Cold Atlantic on Den Tapes—a double-guitar record exploring the nooks and crannies of the places once called home. These songs map memory: cold Chicago “L” stops in January, worn and warm practice rooms, and the towns we grow up in never to return, all rendered in interlocking guitars and lived-in melodies.
Intentionally steering clear of overt complexity and turning hard into pleasure and nuance, these songs were built to be played—to be examined and experienced anew with every show. “Systems” sets the tone: patient and propulsive, a study in how the patterns we build both hold us together and pull us forward.
Echoing the glow of Americana, the bombastic crush of ’70s FM radio à la Crazy Horse or Big Star, and the aching laments Jason Molina brushed against, Long Dark Moon tells its story with both passion and ethos. If All Your Mountains (the band’s debut full-length) stretched into loss, mental health, identity, gender, disappointment—and yes, a lot of guitar solos—Cold Atlantic turns the lens toward belonging: the places we leave, the memories we carry, and the music that stitch the seams together.