Moonlight Passes On

After a decade since their last record, Attic Abasement returns with their fourth studio album, Moonlight Passes On, via Father/Daughter Records. The Rochester, NY recording project, led by singer/songwriter Mike Rheinheimer and joined by a rotating cast of local musicians, has existed as an outlet to work through Rheinheimer’s doubt and low-grade existential anxiety. While 2016’s Dream News was captured in a live, full band setting, Moonlight Passes On emerged from years of introspection; a practice of solitude. “I had a handful of songs sitting on the shelf for years but had just been inspired over the course of a few nights in my basement in early 2023,” explains Rheinheimer. He played nearly every instrument on the album, assembling the songs piece by piece in layered sessions with producer, engineer and friend, Ben Morey at Submarine Sound Studio in Rochester. The approach is a harkening back to Dancing is Depressing (2010) and Swim Through the Dirt (2008), revered titles in the band’s extensive catalog. “That moniker and legacy has always felt like an eternal outlet for me. It feels like a part of my bedrock I can always come back to,” says Rheinheimer. 

There’s a sense of space throughout Moonlight Passes On, floating somewhere between cramped basement recordings and wide-open air. Within that atmosphere, Rheinheimer’s songwriting remains the center of gravity. “Mirrored in Plastic” stretches out over gently strummed rhythm guitar and long, sighing vocal lines, its weary humor and plainspoken melancholy recalling the cracked poetry of David Berman and the non-chalant shrug of Silver Jews. “Bruised Water Moon” leans into early Pacific Northwest indie and Midwestern emo, its crooning melody sliding across open guitars and pedal-steel accents that give the song a faint Western glow. “T-Shirt” hangs on these loose, glinting guitar lines that drift a little sideways, something in the spirit of Pavement, while “Hunting Space” keeps to a quiet, steady drum pulse, the rest of the song easing in around it over time.

Across the album, Rheinheimer’s lyrics are delivered in small confessions, the kind of self-awareness that feels a little under the breath but land wholeheartedly. It’s a mode he’s returned to for years: songs that seem found in the moment, like the words and melodies just flow out while he’s playing.