Let’s get the stuff about The Past out the way first, shall we? I mean, in some respects it must be difficult for an artist like Stuart Moxham to have had his first group be as lastingly influential as Young Marble Giants have been. The band may have existed for the briefest of periods, but the ripples from their sole album (1980’s Colossal Youth’) continue to expand and to touch new generations of listeners and musicians. It remains one of my own personal all-time favourites. Then of course there was The Gist, Moxham’s post-Young Marble Giants duo act with his brother Philip. Their ‘Embrace The Herd’ LP from 1982 might not be so revered as ‘Colossal Youth’ but it certainly still sounds just as fresh today as it ever did.
So, difficult for Moxham in as much as people like me feel obliged to bring up those past (and now somewhat distant) achievements before ever mentioning whatever he’s doing now. Yet the truth is that this reflexive harking to the past can be as irritating to the writer as it may be to the artist (or indeed the reader). Something to do with the slippage of time or the erosion of synaptic connections exposing foundations that often, on inspection, seem to be crumbling and horribly weak. Or maybe that’s just me?
Another truth, however, is that the continuing creative output of artists that we have enjoyed in our pasts can act simultaneously as a salve. It can ease the itch and soothe the pain of introspective remembrance. This is certainly the case with ‘Winter Sun’, whose songs sound both comfortingly familiar and refreshingly new.
In terms of the practicalities, Moxham appears to have been happy to enter into a significant level of collaboration with producer Dave Trumfio (production for American Music Club and Built To Spill, amongst others, and also a member of Mekons and Pulsar, whose excellent eponymous 1997 LP was reissued by Tiny Global in 2024), allowing him to choose what tracks to record and how to orchestrate them. Thus, what we hear on ‘Winter Sun’ is perhaps as much Trumfio’s album as Moxham’s. The role of the producer as someone at least as important as the artist in the creation of recorded sound is as old as the hills of course, as is the process of remixing, reworking, remodelling (and reissuing). This kind of openness to others’ manipulations of his songs feels particularly apt in Moxham’s case, for of all the Post-Punk acts active as the 1970s segued into the 80s, Young Marble Giants and The Gist in many ways still sound like those most connected to notions of multiple possibilities. The minimalist spaciousness of those songs lends them a malleable quality that the likes of Lush, Etienne Daho, Magnetic Fields and Belle and Sebastian amongst others have recognised in their reworkings down the years.
In the spirit of such malleability then, it appears that Trumfio’s recordings for ‘Winter Sun’ have since been reworked by Tiny Global label boss John Henderson and Roni Ayala, the results of which will be apparently be released as a kind of companion/twin piece. This feels fitting given the brotherly aspects at play here (Stuart and Phil Moxham, obviously, but Pulsars comprised Trumifio and his brother Harry…) and it will certainly be interesting to hear the differences in treatment.
Under Trumfio’s production the songs retain the cool sparse qualities that have been inherent in much of Moxham’s previous work but pair it with a gentle warmth that is entirely apt given the album’s title. The sound is therefore pretty much exactly what it says on the tin (or the album sleeve, which incidentally features a gorgeous abstract painting with collage visual references). Lyrically the songs also echo that theme of a warming sun in winter’s chill, with themes of the past, loss and memory filtering through much of the album. There certainly seem to be wounds to be tended here, but they are displayed delicately and treated with the care of ancient remedies.
Opener ‘Cottonmill Lane’ sounds like a brisk stroll along the pavement of regret, a journey through suburban edge lands with one foot in the past and one in the present. ‘The Quiet One’ seems to be filtered through with paternal anxieties and the tethers of inherited disquiet – the eternal search for voice and purpose within the expanse of humanity, or something like this. ’A Different Day’ meanwhile has an oddly captivating Country vibe, like Hank Williams in a Truffaut movie whilst ‘State of Penitentiary’ is even more gloriously downbeat. The tale of a soul tethered to self-inflicted penitence, the song feels like both a commiseration with the need for endless introspection and a skewering of the same impulse.
So it is that whilst appearing delicately pulled from a personal past, Moxham’s ruminations manage to also feel universal and entirely contemporary, so that the present’s preoccupation with division and hate feel magically dissipated by an infusion of love. Moxham’s songs have never been prone to the passionate exuberance of youth (not even when he was young himself) but instead have flowed with what feels like a deeply felt, dare we say, spiritual love. The terrific ‘Before We Prayed’ might bear this out, for it is easy to read the song as being about the appeal of God in secular contexts. Something more abstract than the need for churches and organised prayer. I’m likely talking rubbish, and again, this perhaps says more about me and my place in space and time as it does about these songs, but I do get a sense of calm permeating everything. Not so much a resignation to how things might be as a richly enveloping acceptance. The presence of God within and without us, perhaps.
Regardless, ‘Winter Sun’ is a marvellously cohesive sounding album that whilst making reference to Stuart Moxham’s past, reminds us too that he is still an artist making work of lasting worth and warmth.
‘Winter Sun’ is released on 7th November 2025 by Tiny Global Productions: https://moxham.bandcamp.com/album/winter-sun
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Alistair Fitchett. 2025
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