My Inspiration: Duncan Lloyd – Red Moon

Songwriter, guitarist and founding member of North East art-rockers Maximo Park, Duncan Lloyd, releases his new solo album Green Grows Devotion (Selected Works) via Reveal Records.

The lead single, Red Moon, is a delicate and melodic offering with a folky/Americana feel and a sixties psych ambience. It comes accompanied by a video which was filmed on a “doom-filled January day in the snowy woods near Hexham”.

Here, Duncan tells us what inspired the track…

Sometime during lockdown I remember picking up a guitar one morning knowing an idea was about to happen and this song came along, before I had time to dwell on it the whole thing had quickly formed itself. It’s quite rare but that sometimes happens with a song, you have to work backwards to try and understand where it has come from and often there isn’t a clear answer. Maybe it was due to the uneasy times we were living through but I do remember a few nights previous to this I witnessed a full, larger than usual, red-tinted moon on a walk home & that must have stayed in the back of my mind. Put simply, it is probably a song about the strange energy of the moon.

I heard recently that some songwriters are suspicious about writing under a full moon as it can either have a very good or bad influence on what the song turns out like. It’s funny as it was nearly one of the songs that fell through the cracks, some get recorded and some don’t, not every song needs to exist more than the day it’s made but some come back and knock on your door asking for attention and this was one of them.

It’s a sparse little song and I think that’s why I liked it, it has a space & moodiness that makes me think of a short dark film. There is an older folkier influence to it and that has always been part of what has influenced me, particularly Irish folk music, especially in the way the words & rhythm roll around.  

It was recorded at home, starting as a simple acoustic thing but I didn’t capture the mood at first so played around with a darker sound, giving a more muted performance to add a little tension with haunting echoes on top and then the imagery in the song started to come to life. The chorus developed to be sung almost as a spooky croon which was something new that I hadn’t tried before.

Ultimately the song goes back to the grander theme of being caught under the spell of nature and listening to what it has to tell us.

In a semi-interesting coincidence, the song is released this May, right when a red moon appeared, aka Super Blood Flower Moon, kind of wished I’d called it that now, bit of mouth full though, perhaps that can be the next album title.