Moon Walker Expands Its Sound but Keeps the Sarcasm

You can call Harry Springer a traveling man these days. The Moon Walker frontman is spending time in Denver, where he grew up, while preparing for a show at New York’s Mercury Theater in April. He’s still bouncing in and out of L.A., the town that birthed his fuzz pedal-approved heavy-rock duo.

Springer’s life is in a bit of flux, and so is his music. He's preparing to release the band's second album, Attack of the Mirrors, a more expansive followup to its debut, Truth to Power, along with numerous accompanying singles.

Truth to Power, released in the summer of 2021, evokes ’70s rock-and-roll giants David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and especially T-Rex and its wild-haired frontman, Marc Bolan. The songs originated as White Stripes rip-offs he wrote to sell to sound libraries, where they would conceivably be plucked for movies and television shows. But Springer wrote a few songs that he decided he couldn’t send to the sound bank, and joined forces with drummer Sean McCarthy to make Truth to Power. Springer and McCarthy are also bandmates in the Midnight Club.

“On Truth to Power, I really just played to my strengths,” Springer says. “Write a guitar riff, a bass line and drum part, and double the guitar. I approached things the way you would on an eight-track, when you’ve got limited resources and limited space.”



But the production for The Attack of Mirrors incorporates more audio effects, such as stereo phasing, than its predecessor. Springer looked to musicians including Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor — whose production techniques have influenced many, including rapper and producer El-P of Run the Jewels — for inspiration.

“There’s a Timbaland, of all people, quote where he said something like, ‘I like Nine Inch Nails. It sounds like robots walking around on the track,’” Springer recalls. “Just like these things that sound very electronic or something, like it couldn’t have come from an instrument.”

The new approach, however, doesn't mean he abandoned the sound of the first record and its ’70s influence. Springer cops to swiping some of Queen's studio tricks, including triple-tracking vocal harmonies, for songs such as "We Don't Make Decisions."

“Queen is one of my favorite bands,” Springer says. “They are totally embedded in my DNA. But I rarely anymore pull direct inspiration, like T-Rex, because I spent so many years using them as my only inspiration.”

Springer’s lyrics on Truth to Power dripped with sarcasm and snarkiness, so much so that some reviewers misinterpreted the lyrics and mistook the band for a conservative White Stripes on at least one occasion. “The TV Made Me Do It” took shots at the U.S. Capitol insurrectionists and “Tear Down The Wall” concerned the 2020 presidential election.

“It was quite confusing that people were mistaking our politics,” he says. “It is what it is. People listen to seven seconds of something and there is sarcasm. But it was very specific, and you couldn’t miss it.”

The song titles on The Attack of  Mirrors — “Turn Off This Song (Before it Takes Your Soul)," “I’m Afraid I’ll Go to Heaven” and “Fucking Up Your Program” — betray a sense that he’s not learned his lesson regarding sarcasm. But the songs are a bit more personal, and the politics are broader. A just-released single from the upcoming album “Doombox,” for example, imagines people latching onto media such as Fox News or Infowars that prods them into a manic state, albeit one that imparts a sense of comfort. But Springer is not letting anyone off the hook, joking that his parents watch too much MSNBC. The song can refer to any type of media that thrives on making a person feel imminently in danger. It also has a more personal element that stretches beyond politics.

“Not that I have a problem with drinking or pills or anything like that whatsoever,” he says. “But it does get to me sometimes [that] being such a depressed pessimist can be almost comforting. I can lean on things that are negative or destructive, because that’s comforting.”

And that’s not to say Infowars doesn't produce some of the craziest stuff on the internet, a media company that lures gullible people into getting hooked on the idea that they know something others don't.

“That’s what the second verse ends up being about,” he explains. “Especially the Infowars stuff. … Leaning on something like that is kind of an ego thing, feeling like you are ahead of the curve, feeling like you’re the guy letting people in on this quote-unquote ‘knowledge.’”

Sonically, the song evokes Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, particularly the phaser-soaked intro of a song like “Killing in the Name.” The sound offers strong evidence that Moon Walker is progressing from its more stripped-down roots. Springer says most guitarists of his generation probably credit Rage Against the Machine as an influence. “[It's] such a guitar-heavy band with these incredible riffs that you can also learn as a beginner,” he says. “I think that anyone who took guitar lessons learned a Rage Against the Machine song.”

On “Turn Off This Song (Before It Takes Your Soul)," Springer created a loop and made the song structurally more like a rap song, eschewing chorus and bridges, at least at first. The song changed over time. He spread out on the verses, which he says are weird and move in a lot of directions. When describing it, he invokes David Cronenberg’s bizarre 1983 body horror flick Videodrome. The movie stars James Woods as a sleazy cable-TV producer who discovers a strange broadcast that shows nothing but violence and of course tries to exploit it for his own channel. Like the movie, the song soaks in paranoia.

“A lot of things have touched on it, like blaming media and blaming radio and blaming all of these different things for problems,” Springer says. “At its core, that’s kind of what the song is about — this irrational distrust because people are so disinclined to take responsibility for anything. It’s easier to pin it on these crazy movies or something they can’t even understand.”

“Doombox” is now available. “Turn Off This Song (Before It Takes Your Soul)" is due out in mid-April. Watch for Attack of the Mirrors this summer. For more information and music, check out listentomoonwalker.com.