Moviola

Earthbound. Interstellar overdriving or rooted in terra firma? Both, both. On their 11th album, 30 years down the line, Columbus, Ohio collective Moviola step on with a world-weary stride, holding two thoughts at the same time, containing multitudes, making the most personal, direct, and urgent music of their lives.

In between the cracks of the musical Rust Belt, Columbus, Ohio’s Moviola has quietly—FOR 30 YEARS—produced an expansive catalog, with (now) 11 records and countless 7” inch singles, a radio show, and a concert film to their name, spanning everything from 4-track fuzz-pop to hi-fi country soul. With five equal singers and songwriters—the whole is greater than the parts, democratic ideals, fucking Gestalt theory in action. Recording themselves, in studios that they built themselves. Writing and performing fully fleshed concert films. As much prankster art collective as…band. Some parallel universe Midwestern EGOT stuff, right there. A small cadre of supportive labels, writers and fans have followed along for the ride. This August, they return with record #11, Earthbound, their first on Kingston, New York-based Dromedary Records.

Started by Jake Housh in 1993 in a duplex near Ohio State, the band, on early 45s and 1994’s Frantic sounded less like their Columbus punk contemporaries, and more like “Neil Young’s noisy nephews” (LA Weekly). Throughout their early career, the group played live shows with kindred bands like Fruitbats, Flaming Lips, Calexico, Califone, Guided By Voices, and many others, yet it was the pursuit of collective learning-by-doing, happy accidents, experimentation and recording in various basement, warehouse, and attic studios that became their primary raison d'être. In quick succession, The Year You Were Born (1997), Glen Echo Autoharp (1998), and The Durable Dream (1999) saw the group cover wide sonic turf, traversing buzzing lo-fi rock, Space Echo® folk, pure pop arrangements, and nooks in between. Split singles were fast and frequent as well, sharing sides with like-minded friends like the Handsome Family, Cobra Verde, Tobin Sprout, Hiss Golden Messenger and Eric’s Trip. Rumors of the Faithful (2001), East of Eager (2004) and Dead Knowledge (2007) came next, and found the band growing in sound and scope. A singles compilation Broken Horses (2008), Scrape and Cuss (2019), Broken Rainbows (2022) bring us up to the release of Earthbound.

As has been the unique blueprint for how they approach music-making, Earthbound contains multitudes: shared songwriting from each member of the group, at times lush, at others coarse, yet the result has a singular “Moviola-ness” about it all, occupying its own headspace. Recorded in Columbus, Brooklyn, and Brattleboro, it’s the most realized, succinct and least ambiguous effort of their career. Five separate voices, coming off as one, a band of brothers, no time for mincing words. Can a group be hitting its stride 30 years in? It seems so. Listen in.

"Moviola are that rare and notoriously unstable entity—a collective whose identity is the blurry combination of five individual voices, rather than a kingpin or two and their helpers. (What's more...) they've sidestepped the traps and girdles of any genre or tribe in favor of forging their own route, always beautiful and believable." — NPR

...Mostly, however, Moviola taps the spirit of a band like NRBQ, another open-ended combo that always swung to their own trend. Their albums play like a murmur from the old world, tracing a fading movement in pop music that never really was. --TimeOut NY

...It's the ability to be quirky, individualist and knowing, include ironic asides, and at the same time communicate real feeling, or to empathize so strongly with another, that you're actually there with them. That's the exceedingly rare quality that Moviola have.--SF Weekly


...(Moviola's) unadorned melodies, gliding riffs and prose coalesce song and story into multi-dimensioned scenes starring characters you can almost touch. Moviola offer a place to shake off your shoes and bleed into the woodwork. --LA Weekly