Moneyball by Dutch Interior

While Moneyball is punctuated by uncertainty, at its core it is still tethered to the inherently spiritual relationship the bandmates have not only with each other, but with the world that surrounds them. Recorded over a six month period in their Long Beach studio, the ten songs that make up the record find cohesion “not just in the art but the physical space”: the band’s self-made studio as well as their longstanding friendships. Produced by Reeves and mixed by Phil Ek (Modest Mouse, Duster, Fleet Foxes), you can begin to pick up the separate stylings and personalities of the band members by the songs they independently write (five out of the six band members have vocal and lyrical credits on the record) before bringing to the band at large, where the songs often grow into new forms all together. Despite this individual approach to songwriting, they describe each other as “branches of the same core life” whose colliding influences and experience all bleed into the songs.

It’s their devotion to all forms of art that has lead to the band as the centerpiece. Together and apart, they watch films, cook and listen to a breadth of musical genres spanning ambient, slowcore, experimental folk, alt country, jazz, southern rock and all forms of dance music. These disparate influences converge on Moneyball, which shapeshifts and oscillates between alternative country, sharply hewn indie rock and hints of dissonant ambience, all while still sounding like a band who both speak their own private language and translate it into something universal.

“We wanted to acknowledge that we exist in a tradition of American music and take that to places that are personal to us. It’s like we renovated an old house and then invited people in.” The ten songs are an expansion of the six-piece’s own history, a hyper-specific lore that can both recede and reappear into an endless loop of the landscape that surrounds them. They often zero in on minute, mundane details with a peculiar degree of affectation. All of Dutch Interior are internalized romantics, enraptured with fragmented moments that appear almost slapdash in their lyrics as well as the naive belief in human connection as the only way to save ourselves. In the same way artists like Wilco or Lucinda Williams have turned classic songwriting on its head, Moneyball finds its way through its own humorous twists and turns, alongside an undercurrent of omnipresent, steadfast declarations of love. It’s this stark romanticism that makes the music of the band expand outside the confines of the spaces they dwell into something more universally compelling, a manifestation of hope and faith that, together, they can create something bigger than themselves. Or maybe it’s not that deep: in “Horse,” Reeves dreams of a simpler life, in the countryside with kids and a maxed out credit card. “Live, laugh, love,” he sighs earlier on in the record; “plant my ass / deeper than a root.”

Much like the original Dutch Interiors, a series of three surrealist paintings by the artist Joan Miro in 1928 that are of themselves reimaginings of their original works, the band continue to ruminate on the permanence of anything and everything, and the inescapable conclusion that change ushers on whether we’re ready or not. It’s a feeling that remains with you long after the music stops playing. But in this heightened fragility also exists the band’s shared vision that if we dig our heels in, and nourish the relationships that bind us, a brighter version of the future emerges. Dutch Interior have made it this far together. “In the countryside, is where we’ll die,” Nugent imagines, an almost crass optimism that suggests either blind faith or a risk that will ultimately pay off. In Moneyball, it’s worth a shot.

Los Angeles band