limbo

MOIST REMAINS IN LIMBO

Author: Jon Cook
Source: JAM! Showbiz (url)
Date: November 4, 2003

TORONTO -- Three albums into a successful solo career and Moist is not even a blip on David Usher's radar screen.

With the recent release of Hallucinations, Usher admits he isn't even thinking about reuniting his former bandmates for another Moist record.

"I'm really focussed on solo stuff," says the former Moist frontman, while promoting the 13-song recording. "All the guys are focussed on other things and that's where we are. I don't think anyone in the band is inspired to make a Moist record right now."

However, Usher's solo career is more of an evolution from Moist than a complete separation. Besides Usher, all three of the original band members - Mark Makowy (guitarist), Jeff Pearce (bassist) and Kevin Young (keyboardist) - have contributed in some form on all of Usher's solo projects. Makowy even helped produce and mix four songs on the new album.

Since Moist's last album - Mercedes Five and Dime (2000) - Usher released Morning Orbit (2001) and Hallucinations in the span of just 26 months, while touring extensively in Canada and Europe. The platinum-selling Morning Orbit spawned four hit singles, a Juno award, a pair of MMVAs and pushed his solo-album sales to more than 1.2 million.

Hallucinations debuted at No. 6 on the Nielsen SoundScan Canada charts in September, the best opening for an Usher album. In it's first two months it has sold 18,800 copies, a far cry from Morning Orbit's 33,200, but still a respectable total in today's depressed music industry.

In short, he's not hurting financially, the usual prerequisite for getting a band back together.

While Moist's future is uncertain, Usher stops short from driving the final nail in the coffin.

"I don't know where it stands," he said. "We are not presently making records at this point. The structure of Moist is the democratic process of voting and sometimes it's great to be in that process because of the brotherhood. It's amazing and you're a family and blah, blah, blah...but sometimes you just want to do what the fuck you want to do and you want to try different things that strike your mind."

For Usher part of that freedom includes recording with different musicians and various producers.

"That's just not the nature of a band," admits Usher, who enlisted the help of David Gray producer Iestyn Polson to help him explore new territory. "I'd feel the same way if they were saying: 'Let's get someone else to sing all these songs.' You might wonder what the point of being in a band was."

The point is that the writing may well be on the wall for Moist.

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