Red Moon Joe - Love-Locked Dreams (2025) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. I Still See You
02. Just to Stay with Me
03. Girl from Your Hometown
04. The 315
05. Falling Down
06. Wishing Well
07. Life Without Love
08. Whisky, Cigarettes and Rain
09. Dying for Your Love
10. 25 Years

They say that good things are worth waiting for, and that’s certainly true of UK roots-rock band Red Moon Joe’s latest release. Following the success of 2013’s Midnight Trains, the first Red Moon Joe album in more than 20 years, and 2017’s Time and Life, Red Moon Joe return with Love-Locked Dreams. Writing and recording an album about the joys and heartache of love was not what the band intended when they hit the studio in 2020. But in the subsequent recording sessions, punctuated by lockdowns, illness and loss, love became the band’s primary focus.

Where Time and Life offered a lavish palette of arrangements, augmented by keyboards, brass, pedal steel guitar, and guest appearances from Del Amitri’s Justin Currie (an old friend from back when both bands shared the same management), Virginian singer-songwriter Cathryn Craig, and Jason Isbell’s guitarist Sadler Vaden, the new album goes back to basics. Out goes the pedal steel, and in come the twin electrics of the principal songwriters, Mark Wilkinson and David A Smith, creating a chiming, overdriven sonic landscape of pure six-string joy. Alongside this is the work of multi-instrumentalist ‘Brave’ Dave Fitzpatrick on banjo, mandolin and tear-jerking harmonica. Nailing this to the floor are the newcomers: Karl Davies on drums, percussion and vocals, and Clarke Taylor on bass and vocals, two musicians with long track records on the road and in the studio. Four years in the making, the result is an album that is Red Moon Joe, pure and simple. Call it what you will – roots-rock, alt-country, cowpunk – it doesn’t matter. This is Red Moon Joe at its honest best.

In the rich tradition of Americana, these songs tell stories. The 315 is a true story of real post-war Polish immigrants and how soon a country forgets. Just to Stay Here With Me and Wishing Well chart lost romance and regret. The struggles and beauty of family relationships are reflected in I Still See You and 25 Years. These stories came together over a long journey that saw the band members, like many others, struggle with personal hardship, tragedy and loss. Ultimately though, these things bound them ever more tightly together. The result? An album made with and about love. Like the man said, “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.”

This year sees the 40-year anniversary of Red Moon Joe. Mark originally formed the band in 1985. With cowpunk and paisley underground in vogue, the band toured constantly in the ‘80s and ‘90s throughout the UK and Europe, releasing the album Arms Of Sorrow on the iconic Run River label, also home to Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. After a hiatus in the late noughties, Wilkinson reconvened Red Moon Joe in the 2000s, eventually releasing Midnight Trains and Time and Life to considerable praise.

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