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Album Review | ‘Moon Calendar’ by Travis McNamara

McNamara’s debut album breathes depth and form into the loneliness, isolation, and uncertainty of the COVID-19 lockdown landscape.

Z-side's Music Reviews
The Riff
7 min readJan 4, 2025

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The artwork for Travis McNamara’s debut album Moon Calendar. (Photo from Bandcamp)

Many people’s lives were turned upside down in the face of COVID lockdowns. One of those would be Travis McNamara. As a long-time member of the alternative folk group Trout Steak Revival, the group finds themselves stagnated by quarantine. The multi-instrumentalist would use this time to continue his creativity by writing and recording his debut album Moon Calendar. Travis brings with him a bevy of instruments to layer a variety of earthy, haunting sounds to create a folk-adjacent soundscape to bathe in.

McNamara shared with Americana Highways that his urge to perform solo had been growing before this album’s release:

“There was something I could feel growing in me. Whenever I got the opportunity to play a really quiet show or a listening room with a band, it elicited a different performance from me. Everyone is listening to everything that you do, so you just become more intentional. You can play different kinds of songs in those rooms. Maybe you can have more emotional, more vulnerable music. Those were always so fulfilling for me, and whenever I got to do this as a solo artist, it was like…

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Z-side's Music Reviews
Z-side's Music Reviews

Written by Z-side's Music Reviews

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