Moonstruck

Two kids are dressed in feathers and are running around the Phoenix Park. A young man is taking pictures and another one is recording the action. It’s not the setting of a new indie movie and it’s not Hallowe’en either. It’s Hello Moon.

Fully embracing the Do It Yourself ethic, Hello Moon pretty much did everything that needed to be done to bring out their first studio album with minimal external help. They wrote and recorded all their songs, came up with the idea for the album art, ‘kidnapped’ band member Amanda’s nephews for one day, put them in bird costumes made by their auntie and shot them. They didn’t even hire a professional photographer. And if you listen to Only Count The Sunny Hours or look at its cover, you may observe that it’s all been done by ’amateurs’.
Is the DIY thing some sort of ideology? “Everything we do, we do it ourselves or with friends ‘cos we can’t afford it!”, the lead singer and the guitarist, both named Alan, laugh.
And all thanks to the recession. If half of the band’s members hadn’t been unemployed, all this would probably have never happened, at least not as quickly. With only one of them having a full-time day job, the other three had plenty of time on their hands to prepare and release an album only a year-and-a-half after Hello Moon were formed.
So how did it all happen? The two Alans were studying at the same university but never spoke to each other until Alan 1 learnt that Alan 2 played music. “I just walked up to him and begged him to come down and play with me and Eamon”, he says. But Alan 2 has a revelation to make: “I knew him much longer than he knew me; we were on the same bus every day and he was sitting at the back chatting away about the gig he played the night before and I was totally jealous that he was in a band”. A case of stalking? “Now he lives with me, best stalker ever”, Alan 1 laughs.
But the band needed a woman’s touch to get out of the darkness of their shed, where they used to practice, still embarrassed to play in front of other people. It was only when Amanda joined them that Hello Moon were finally formed. As for the name, they say it roughly came from the popular children’s book Goodnight Moon (all praise to Celina Murphy for guessing it right in her review of the album).
Inspired by ‘60s girl bands like The Crystals, Hello Moon’s dreamy pop is humble but infectious. “We’re not trying to do crazy pop music”, says Alan 1. “It probably has been done before but not in the way we do it. We’d hope so, anyway.” Although their album title suggests otherwise, there is a sweet melancholia, not to say darkness, in the music and lyrics of Only Count The Sunny Hours. The phrase is taken from an inscription on a sundial but as Alan 1 explains, there is an underlying irony in it. “It’s an optimistic statement, saying, ‘Only count the happy hours’, but a sundial can’t really count anything else, it’s kind of sad. When it’s dark it has no purpose.”
Then again, Hello Moon do not take themselves too seriously. How could they, when the closing track of their debut is a song named ‘Awkward Hugs’, written after a spate of awkward physical contact? “Sometimes we are a bit socio-awkward”, Alan 1 tries to explain. “Some hugs go so terribly wrong, but I guess writing a song about it is an overreaction.”
Hello Moon’s uniqueness extends beyond their songwriting. Instead of producing a ‘proper’ music video to promote the band, they have put out two videos featuring only scenes from a ‘70s film adaptation of Saint Exupery’s famous novel The Little Prince. And they don’t intend to change their tactic any time soon. “I don’t like the idea of miming along a track that you couldn’t play live unless you had another five musicians”, declares Alan 1. Alan 2 agrees: “We’re gonna do a recipe video and only our hands will be coming into the shot.”
But these are only future plans. For the time being, Hello Moon are just enjoying the fruit of their labour and are happy to hold the Only Count The Happy Hours LP in their hands. “We put a lot of effort to finally have it out after what seems like a marathon of hard work and concentration”, Alan 1 reasons. “And to have a hand all the way through the process was a bit nerve-wracking, but we’re really excited we have something now to say ‘this is us’... Every parent thinks their child is really pretty but it’s lovely hearing it back and thinking we’ve done a good job.”

Hello Moon’s debut album Only Count The Sunny Hours is out now on Any Other City records. The band will be performing live at the Hard Working Class Heroes festival in October.