Time, Christine Moad knew, was of the essence.
Moad, the creative force and bassist for power-pop outfit Miss Christine, decided she needed to record her album quickly in February 2018. Taking time to agonize over every tiny detail could derail the entire project, she reasoned, and keep her songs from ever seeing an official release. So she gathered some charts and demos of her songs and showed them to a group of musicians who had never heard them before.
The band arranged and recorded each song in the studio, quickly turning out the 12 tracks that would form Miss Christine’s latest album, Conversion, released earlier this summer.
“I’m a perfectionist and knew this was the only way I could record my album without getting too much in my head,” Moad said via email. “This approach was terrifying but so rewarding.”
Moad said she hopes the creative energy unleashed when she and the band members figured out the arrangements would saturate the recordings. The approach allows the listener to discover the songs alongside the musicians.
“My idea is that music is most powerful when it’s first created,” she said.
Moad is an Iowa native. She grew up near Allison but moved away at 17 to study electric bass performance at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. From there, she moved to Nashville, where she found work as a session and touring bassist. But Moad moved back to Iowa when she decided it was time to focus on her own compositions, and she currently lives on a farm near Iowa City.
“I found myself at a crossroads and decided I wanted to do my own music,” she said when discussing her return to her home state. “I moved back to Iowa to finish writing my album and do some self reflection. It has been great to reconnect to my roots and enjoy the beauty of Iowa.”
Despite the compressed recording process, the songs on Conversion don’t sound hurried or sloppy. Rather, they feature a diverse range of instrumentation and textures. Album opener “Be Present” crackles with delightfully punky guitar tones and horn swells, while the title track strikes a more dramatic tone with somber keys and ominously whispered background vocals. Breakup song “Without You” dials up an r&b-inspired groove and guitar part and a big-time singalong chorus.
The album covers a lot of lyrical ground as well. Numbers like “Be Present” and “The Millennial Paradigm” take on social and philosophical topics of relevance to modern life. “Green Walls, Red Trim” and “Without You” are more character based. “Nightmare In the Daytime,” in which the narrator finally works up the courage to confront a manipulator, contains some scorchingly cathartic kiss-off lyrics.
“But I can see right through it to the root of your lies,” Moad sings on one of the catchiest choruses of the entire album. “You’re a horrible person with the worst disguise.”
Miss Christine is wrapping up an East Coast tour and will almost certainly play some gigs closer to home in the near future. In the meantime, stream Conversion and check out Miss Christine’s website for official music videos for album tracks “Conversion,” “Entitled” and “Skinny Jeans.”
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