Seven years after their anarchic dance-pop debut, The Moonlandingz are back with a vengeance in their pulsating return to form – No Rocket Required. With all the full throttle lunacy of their previous album, Interplanetary Class Classics, the Sheffield based band has produced what will certainly be the most eclectic album of 2025.
The band’s core trio is comprised of Eccentronic Research Council alumni Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer and fronted by the imperious Lias Saoudi of Fat White Family and Decius fame. An unlikely meeting of minds and styles that results in a duo of albums that displays scant regard to categorisation with a gaggle sticky figures in as many musical pies. No Rocket Required, on this account, almost takes the biscuit, pushing itself to dabble in disco with the standout single ‘The Sign of a Man’, as well as a spot of jazzy spoken word in the Iggy Pop narrated ‘Its Where I’m From’, and the gothic sleaze of Saoudi’s duet with Nadine Shah in ‘Roustabout’ which the band compares, in characteristically self-indulgent style, as ‘the Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue two-way for our times’. This indulgence is rightfully deserved, and replicated with self-effacing glee in the opening track, ‘Some Peoples Music’, a intro in the most literal sense which, through the escalating rantings of surprise cameo Ewen Bremner (who played the unmistakable Spud in everyone’s favourite Scottish drug-binge flick), confesses that whilst some music is beautiful and profound other music is ‘completely hopeless’, confessing with a grimace ‘this is such music’. If fact, Bremner can’t seem to find strong enough language to convey how crap what will follow really is, proclaiming that ‘I’d rather be fucking deaf man … no, I’d rather go blind AND deaf than listen to this shit and have to look at the record cover’. The latter complaint some might empathise with.
With expectations set staggeringly low by the damning intro track, Johnny Rocket (Saoudi’s fictional alter-ego), and his band, continue the show with the pulpy disco tune, and best of the album’s singles, ‘The Sign of a Man’. Opening scratchy synths precede the signature gnarled whispers of Saoudi whose professions of masculinity are as ironic as they are humorously pathetic – a prideful ‘four inch’ admission comes to mind . This song also perhaps boasts some of the album’s most memorable lyrics including a particularly astute geographical statement – ‘I’ve been to Paris, where I ate snails. I’ve been to Cardiff, that’s in Wales’
The Sign of a Man is followed by ‘Roustabout’; a crooning and melancholic duet that’s cryptic lyricism is accompanied by haunting electronic piano and sweeping synths, producing the most enigmatic of the album’s diverse hits. Best consumed alongside the dark Parisian music video which sees a shapely and overaccentuating Lias Saoudi assaulted via rhythmic gymnastics.
Whilst the names other song might draw the eye (The Insects Have Been Shat On for one) what most diverts your attention is invariably the Iggy Pop feature on ‘Its Where I’m From’, situated slap bang in the middle of the track list. Whilst the 78-year old’s vocals have seen better days, the base rawness of the Godfather of Punk’s voice on this song standout as a highlight among the album’s more pop-y numbers.
No Rocket Required caps off its concise 40-minute run time as bold as it began, the final three songs thundering toward the finish line with an energy that threatens to build to climax. The first two of which, ‘Give Me More’ and ‘Stink Foot’ are the most dance-y of the album and are likely to be some of the best to hear at the band’s upcoming nationwide tour. Then finally all comes to ahead with the jarring techno barn burner, ‘The Krack Drought Suite (Pts 1-3)’ which caps off a lovely afternoon’s listening with 9 and a half minutes of headache-inducing Dutch hardstyle and a spot of nonsensical poetry as the bizarre cherry-on-top. I’ll be honest. I don’t know why this is here. It’s long and harsh and an incongruous ending to an album that was, for the most part, a hedonistic but well humoured pop album. It might have seemed more apt for another track like ‘Give Me More’ to have been the closing number since it, in my mind, encapsulates what The Moonlandingz project is all about – i.e. sleazy dance tunes balanced by a punk sensibility and an ironic tongue in cheek. Something I hope to see from the group in this week at their Band on the Wall date in Manchester and in many more extravagant The Moonlandingz records to come.
The Moonlandingz: Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Tour dates:
7th May – The Classic Grand, Glasgow UK
8th May – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds UK
9th May – BOTW, Manchester UK
13th May – Rescue Rooms, Nottingham UK
14th May – Thekla, Bristol UK
15th May – Scala, London UK
16th May – The Great Escape Festival, Chalk, Brighton UK
17th May – Get Together Festival, Sheffield UK
Review by Evan Meikle
Keep up to date with all new content on Joyzine via our
Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram | Threads | Mailing List