The Lunar Laugh stick the landing on final album ‘In the Black’

Last Updated on November 14, 2023, 8:35 PM | Published: November 14, 2023

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The ending is always the hardest part.

That’s true whether you’re writing a song, wrapping up a band, or saying goodbye to someone for the final time. The end is never easy.

And even though “In the Black,” the brand new – and sadly final – album from OKC’s premier power-poppers The Lunar Laugh, hits each of those endings head-on, there’s something impossibly easy about it, bouncing along with enough propulsive, melodic energy to make the bitterness of the end somehow sweeter.

Beginning life nearly a decade ago as a duo of songwriters Jared Lekites and Connor Anderson, The Lunar Laugh evolved eventually into a proper five-piece with drummer Levi Sherman, bassist Triston Lightner, and fellow singer/songwriter/melodic-force-to-be-reckoned-with Campbell Young.

Then came 2020. Then came the pandemic. Then came all the long waiting, the false starts, the brick walls of progress, and worse.

There’s no way to talk about “In the Black” without mentioning the abject tragedy of Lekites losing both his father and brother within a four-month span during the album’s recording, the kind of loss that can stop an artist in their tracks.

That pain and ineffable emotion all find their way into the songs here, but never to drag them down into bleakness or depression, always to simply add gravity and urgency and to highlight the humanity behind the album’s buoyant, polished pop.

And that’s because the songs on “In the Black” aren’t all dire dirges and requiems. Rather, they’re songs of love and solidarity, of perseverance and commitment and mistakes and all the myriad things that make life crazy and unpredictable and, well, life.

It all crashes out of your speakers in the most effusively lively sound one can think of: big-chord, singalong power-pop, in easy shades of Cheap Trick, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, and Big Star, with more than a little of Jimmy Eat World and other later genre initiates appearing.

But there’s something so reminiscent of 70s singer/songwriter folk throughout the album as well, and often in the unlikeliest of places.

Strip away the synths and electro percussion of immediate standout “Allegiance” and you’ll find a pitch-perfect Jackson Browne ballad, and “Stranger than Oz,” very likely the thematic centerpiece of the album, could so easily be a delicate, acoustic Neil Young track.

But it’s never pastiche or self-serving. It’s all just a testament to the strength and thoughtfulness of the songwriting beneath all the fun and energetic production.

By the time you get to the final two tracks, you’re primed and ready for some kind of heavyweight emotional gut-punch, but The Lunar Laugh instead tie a bow on their history in trademark fashion, with a knowing nod to the past, and a glance toward the life still ahead.

Penultimate track “Out of Love” was actually written by Sherman’s own sadly departed father, a beautiful acknowledgment of the band’s always tangible, on-the-sleeve influences, as well as the overriding theme of love’s endurance even through loss.

And then of course there’s “Picture Perfect,” the final track, and for all intents and purposes, now the final Lunar Laugh song.

It would be out of character for these pop-rockers to see themselves off with something too sad or finite, so their parting words are instead a treatise on self-reflection and the kind of “tomorrow never knows” possibility that’s driven them as a unit for all these years:

“Still not picture perfect / But I still give it a try / It’s either death or glory before me / Show me how to survive”

And they say all of that on top of a trotting, folky, acoustic-driven rock ballad overlaid with just enough pedal steel to picture them all riding off into the sunset.

For an album titled “In the Black,” with its pitch-dark, celestial cover art and a backstory confronting death and existential depression, it’s shockingly lively and even life-affirming in ways that only the best albums – and only the best pieces of art created in response to tragedy – can be.

It’s the best example one could ask for of The Lunar Laugh’s abilities as a band, and of the tragedy it is to lose them in the current scene, especially as a slew of great, recent dream-pop and power-pop upstarts in OKC are bringing the sound back to vibrant life.

I guess it’s true that you should always leave them wanting more.

Because after “In the Black,” I’ve never wanted more Lunar Laugh than I do right now.

“In the Black,” the final album by OKC’s The Lunar Laugh, is available now on all streaming platforms and thelunarlaugh.bandcamp.com via Big Stir Records and Catapult Recordings.

Follow The Lunar Laugh online at their official site thelunarlaugh.com and on Facebook and Instagram at @thelunarlaugh

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