Mandy Moore | News | Infotext: Mandy Moore - In Real Life

Mandy Moore: vocals / Mike Viola: keyboards, vocals / Taylor Goldsmith: electric guitar,
vocals / Mike Viola: bass, electric guitar, drums, keyboards / Griffin Goldsmith: drums,
percussions / Lee Pardini: keyboards, piano, Hammond b3 / Davey Faragher: bass / Jess
Wolfe: vocals / Holly Laessigand: vocals / and more

2020 kehrte Mandy Moore kehrt nach einem Jahrzehnt Musikpause mit dem Album „Silver Landings“ auf die Pop-Szene zurück, einem ebenso erwachsenen wie relaxten Album, das mit Einflüssen von Fleetwood Mack bis Joni Mitchell überzeugte.

Noch immer lässt sich prächtig streiten: ist Mandy Moore eine singende Schauspielerin oder eine schauspielernde Sängerin? Fakt ist: Moores achtes Studioalbum „In Real Life“ ist wieder ein gelungenes, erwachsenes Pop/Rock-Werk geworden, ein weiterer künstlerischer Schritt für die inzwischen 37-jährige, die einst mit Teenage-Pop-Hits berühmt wurde.

Die Emmy-, Grammy- und Golden Globe-nominierte Schauspielerin, Sängerin und Songwriterin erregte mit ihrem 1999 mit Platin ausgezeichneten Debütalbum „So Real“ erstmals Aufmerksamkeit, es folgten „I Wanna Be With You“ im Jahr 2000 und ihr selbstbetiteltes drittes Album im Jahr 2001. Ein Jahr später spielte sie in der Verfilmung von Nicholas Sparks „A Walk to Remember“ eine Hauptrolle und gewann einen MTV Movie Award für „Breakthrough Female Performance“. Während des nächsten Jahrzehnts trat Moore in einem Dutzend Filme auf und veröffentlichte eine Reihe äußerst erfolgreicher Pop-Alben: „Coverage“ (2003), „Wild Hope“ (2007) und „Amanda Leigh“ (2009). Seit 2016 spielt sie die Hauptrolle in der von der Kritik gefeierten NBC-Serie “This Is Us”, in der sie für ihre Rolle als Matriarchin Rebecca Pearson Emmy- und Golden Globe-Nominierungen erhielt.

On her new album In Real Life, Mandy Moore shares a window into her world and all that illuminates it: the quiet heartaches and ineffable joys, crushing setbacks and life-changing leaps of faith. Deeply informed by her recent journey into motherhood, the Los Angeles-based artist’s seventh full-length brings a new level of self-possession to her songwriting, imbuing each track with both detailed storytelling and lucid self-reflection. When met with the nuance and power of her indelible voice, In Real Life radiates the kind of dazzling clarity that brightens our own perspective, ultimately making the world around us feel wider and warmer and alive with possibility.

“So much of this record came from future-tripping on the next chapter of my life and what it might look like: what parenthood would feel like, how it would change everything, and all the excitement and trepidation that comes with that,” says Moore. “At the same time it was about celebrating and acknowledging where we were at the moment and really trying to be completely present in the everyday—which is maybe the hardest part of the human condition.”

Produced by Mike Viola (Andrew Bird, Ondara, Lori McKenna), In Real Life expands on the whirlwind creative momentum Moore first set into motion on 2020’s Silver Landings (a critically acclaimed effort that marked her first new body of work in over a decade). To that end, Moore matches the album’s potent emotional current with a gloriously unpredictable sound, touched with elements of everything from jangly college-rock to cinematic synth-pop to classic singer/songwriter simplicity. Thanks to the charmed camaraderie and playful experimentation of Moore and her collaborators—including her husband Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes and his brother/bandmate Griffin Goldsmith, Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius, keyboardist Lee Pardini (The War on Drugs, Aimee Mann), and bassist Sebastian Steinberg (Sharon Van Etten, Phoebe Bridgers)—In Real Life embodies a dreamy effervescence even in its most heavy-hearted moments.

From the very first seconds of the album-opening “Real Life,” Moore fully immerses the listener in her intimate lyricism and kaleidoscopic sound. With its elegant collision of moody guitar work, glacial synth lines, and luminous strings, the slow-burning epic captures the blissful upheaval of becoming a mother (“I spent every day/Filling every page/How the world revolved around me/When I saw your face/I knew right away/We’d be whoever we wanted to be”). Another track graced with a lavish string arrangement from composer Trey Pollard (Snail Mail, Faye Webster), the wildly glittering “Little Dreams” takes on a heady velocity as Moore pays homage to the tiny moments that make up the patchwork of our lives. On “In Other Words,” she speaks to the giddy futility of attempting to quantify her love for her son, a dizzying euphoria perfectly echoed in the song’s driving rhythms and brightly cascading guitar lines. And on the acoustic-guitar-laced “Four Moons,” with its heavenly harmonies and hypnotic B3 organ, Moore spins a spellbinding portrait of her life with her husband, proclaiming her affection with unbridled feeling (“I want to hold your hand/A little too much/Step on your toes/Pull you in close/Never really close enough”).

All throughout In Real Life, Moore suffuses her lyrics with an unguarded humanity that’s undeniably tied to her philosophy as a songwriter. “To me it’s all about staying open, staying aware, staying sensitive and empathetic to the people around me,” she says. “There’s something about expressing myself through lyrics and melody that makes me feel whole, and I see it as a privilege to have that outlet. And even though this album is very specific to me and my experience—there’s songs about my baby, my husband, my father, my friends—I hope everyone’s able to see their own lives in it. I hope they’re able to come along on the journey with me, and put themselves in the driver’s seat.” 

I started writing this song while I was still pregnant with my son Gus, but didn’t end up finishing it until after he arrived. In a way it speaks to every cliché about becoming a parent: all the lights get turned on, everything crystallizes in a way that you never could have imagined. Before Gus was born, my life was completely about me, and not necessarily even in a selfish sense—you just put one foot in front of the other and make your way through the world, and hopefully try to be the best version of yourself. But then this person enters the equation, and all that gets turned on its head. I wanted to write something that distills all that down, and also acknowledges that this is the most important role that I’ll every play in my life.

My husband Taylor and I were writing with Madison Love and our good friend Matthew Koma, and someone made a joke to the effect of, “Here’s one for the Heartland!” But then from that, we came up with the idea of writing a song about an actual heart, and the action of a heart landing. It became a deeply personal song about having great affection for someone, even if you don’t subscribe to the way they live their life or the choices they’re making. It’s about keeping healthy boundaries and loving someone from a bit of a distance and letting them know, “I’ve been watching you and all the craziness that seems to follow you around, and I’ve tried to jump in and save the day for you multiple times. Now I’m just going to let you go on this journey yourself, and I’ll be right here for you whenever you come back down.”

Instead of getting lost in ruminating on the bigger picture, I wanted to write a song about how a life is comprised of these seemingly mundane moments that ultimately all piece together to form something greater. It’s about the little things we look back on with such nostalgia when we’re reflecting on a particular point in time: the walk you took with someone right after it had rained, or the drive when someone introduced you to a record that wound up becoming one of your favorites. It doesn’t always have to be about the flashy things that scream out to us—it’s all those quieter, simpler moments that are worth recognizing and celebrating too.

In the early days of my relationship with my husband, we had a lot cautious minds and hearts around us, people who were worried that it wasn’t the right time for us. But he and I both knew otherwise. When you’re dealing with that kind of doubt and confusion, sometimes all you need is a maybe to keep going. In our case, that maybe gave us permission to move forward, and it all worked out in our favor.

This is our ode to R.E.M., a call-and-response song for me to sing back-and-forth with the band. It came from a lighthearted attempt at making sense of the world in the early days of the pandemic, when no one knew which way was up or what would happen next. Normally my lyrics are true-to-life, but this one turned into a very fun song about a she-devil type who lives according to her own crazy logic. It was a great way to clear out the cobwebs and just have a good time with my friends.

Someone told me early on after Gus was born, “Everything is a phase—the joyful moments, the not-so-joyful moments, everything in between. Don’t get too attached to anything because as soon as you do, it’ll all immediately change.” This song is about trying to find some kind of balance in all that. It’s me trying to make sense of the extremely wonderful but undeniably confusing experience of motherhood, where every day brings something completely new. It’s also about feeling overwhelmed by the amount of love you have for this person, to the point where the only way to really express it is “I love you more than I could ever say.”

“Four Moons” is an unabashed love song to my husband. It’s about caring about someone so much and trying to savor every moment before it slips away to the next—things like our first Christmas together, or a meal we cooked that came out so wrong we just had to laugh about it. It’s asking, “Where did all the days go? When did everything start to feel like it was on fast-forward?”, and just wanting to squeeze him and our life together as tight as I can and not let go.

At the heart of it, Taylor and I are two people who very easily meet in the middle. But we’re also quite different in terms of how we enjoy spending our time, which probably has a lot to do with why we were okay quarantining together for two years. Like, for example, he loves to read for an hour or two every day and needs that time to himself, and I respect that. This song is about highlighting our differences and how we’re able to meet in the middle when it really counts. It’s me telling him, “You can listen to the Grateful Dead and read all day—it’s not necessarily how I’d choose to spend my time, but I adore you and I know you’re in my corner whenever I need you, and vice versa.”

Becoming a parent made me think a lot about my relationship with my own parents, and I decided to write this song for my dad and how much I love and appreciate him and the example he’s set. He retired last year after being a pilot for 42 years; he worked so hard his whole adult life to take care of all of us, so it felt like the right time to tell him, “I’ve always seen you and I’ve always appreciated you. But now that I’m a parent too, I’m even more blown away.” When I finally played the song for him it was a very emotional moment: I don’t think that, as a parent, you ever expect to receive that recognition in such a concrete way. I’m an open book and I’ll forever tell the people in my life how much I love them, but expressing something like that in a song is a whole different thing. 

This is another song born out of trying to make sense of the world right now. What we described is a bit more dystopian than the reality we’re living in, but I loved the idea of finding a partner who’ll escape with you to somewhere new, whether it’s a romantic partner or a deep friendship. As someone who loves travel and adventure, writing this song really fulfilled that urge to go out and start exploring the world again.

“Every Light” was the first song we wrote for the record. It was April 2020 and very scary and confusing times, and we were also dealing with a lot of sadness over the fact that our family plan hadn’t yet unfolded the way we hoped it would. It came from me and Taylor sitting on the floor of our living room, drinking a glass of wine, feeling so disappointed but also trying to stay hopeful. We decided, “Let’s write a song for our future child and tell him or her that we know they’re out there. Our door’s open and the lights are on, and whenever the time is right you’ll know where you’re supposed to go. We’re here waiting.” It’s our little lullaby for our future family member.

Presse / Online
Uwe Kerkau Promotion, Tel: 02206 – 80007
u.kerkau@uk-promotion.de

Radio
Rosita Falke Media Promotion
info@rosita-falke.de, Tel: 040 – 413 545 05