Great Grandpa’s “Patience, Moonbeam” is as multi-layered as a dream, fully-realized yet open-ended. Though the process behind it was collaborative, the artwork was made during a particularly solitary period for singer Al Menne. “The artwork for patience moonbeam was a welcome point of focus on a tour where I traveled entirely alone for about three weeks,” he told us in a statement. “On long drives I imagined something mystical as I listened to what then existed of patience, moonbeam. I went back and forth on whether the moon imagery was too on the head. I landed on: ‘there’s gotta be a moon what are you crazy?’
My method for the album art was as piecemeal as the creation of the actual music. I drafted the idea over and over. Squeezing water colour paints from their small metallic tubes. I hand painted and collaged layer after layer. At a certain point I printed out, and painted over the top on printer paper. I did that a few times until I got the texture I desired. I wanted something to feel abstract, but whole. Like a dream where some things are the outline, and some things are solid like the moon.”
“Patience, Moonbeam” comes over five years, an Al Menne solo album, and an unannounced hiatus since 2019’s very good “Four of Arrows“, and the time away suited this band well. It’s the band’s best album by a mile, a melting pot of indie folk, grungy climaxes, and Radiohead-esque art rock that takes one delightfully unexpected left turn after the next. It has one of the year’s catchiest hooks, so catchy in fact that they sang it on two songs: “Emma” and “Doom.” Some songs are growers and others jump right out at you. Some are minimalist interludes and others are multi-part epics. It’s got plenty of playlist-ready highlights, but it’s also crafted and sequenced in a way that makes “Patience, Moonbeam” greater than the sum of its parts when it’s heard from start to finish. In an era in which too many albums are intentionally front-loaded, this one gets better and better as it goes on.
The Fat Angel Sings 