A Warm Review of The Latest EP from Brooklyn’s Charming Folk Pop Duo

By: Calli Ferguson

If you listen closely, you’ll find moments in Moonmill’s new EP, Soundbite Landfill, that ask you to do just that: listen closely… or maybe even doubt that you really will. They offer a strange reward to the careful consumer. One that has her heart in a yearning state of, “I’m right here! I’m listening! I want to listen.”

But before ever digging into the witty lyrics, sonic parallels, and clever themes in the project, any listener will probably notice how pretty it sounds. Lovely harmonies run through Moonmill’s verses in this delicate conversation of tones. The Brooklyn-based folk-pop duo — Mary Collins and Kaye Hamada — met in high school choir and were later reunited in New York City. It's sweet to think their creative friendship has been growing alongside their voices in those early days, and that perhaps that's why they sound so symbiotic. That vocal dance is mirrored in combinations of acoustic guitars that give the project its folk canvas.

As much as the love of making songs together can be felt in Soundbite Landfill, this project is also deeply honest about what it means to be making music now. Almost looking at itself from above, Soundbite Landfill unpacks the truth of creating in a world of empty consumption and navigating the experience of being a woman in music.

The central image (the “soundbite landfill” in question) will be familiar to anyone engaged with the digital world: a dumping ground of engaging yet fragmented pieces of song, thought, and life. The EP conjures what that space feels like. You’ll even hear fuzzy chatter of voices sprinkled throughout the 6 tracks. At the end of “Make My Case,” that noise fades into pieces of the project’s songs being clicked through, as if shuffled by an impatient hand.

Then there’s the title track itself. “Soundbite Landfill” paints a picture, and the cinematic production elements bring it to life. As the track builds, it takes us on a journey of the creative process: that intoxicating come-up of getting into flow, and, in the chaos, the voices that crowd when creating in an increasingly noisy non-vacuum…

Chorus like a gut punch
Doesn’t it hurt so much
To hear her so lonely?
Thrown into the vortex
Verses out of context
Who knows how the song ends?
Swallowed by the next trend
Soundbite landfill

The song ends on the lyric, “I think I’m halfway there”-- a perfectly incomplete completion.

This sense of choiceful irony runs through the whole project. Lyrically, the EP opens with "Screaming, crying, throwing up…" (on "Ruin It") — a phrase well-worn in internet spaces — and closes in the middle of a sentence (on "One Small Step"). Intentional or not, that’s the pleasure of being a careful listener: you co-create meaning in your experience of something. It is circular. And it is there for our indulgence when art is carefully created.

photography by Kyle Adams

The project also bravely addresses how taking up space can feel like a problem, no matter how we contort ourselves to fit. The EP opener, "Ruin It", puts it plainly between sparkly, sweet textures:

Don’t make it weird
Don’t cause a scene
Don’t throw a fit
Don’t lose your shit
Or better yet just don’t exist
Did I just ruin it for everybody else?

The next track, "Uptight", is also ironically upbeat — as if delivered through a sarcastic smile. The lyrics, though:

I’m learning my limits on a sticky leather bar stool
And you’re pushing yours
You’re pushing thirty
Still poking at a free bird
Till you feel a back bone
And calling me stuck up
Calling me wound up
I’m trapped in the bathroom
While you’re calling your friends up
Making it all up to make me sound uptight

Contemplations on being women in music probably peak with "Make My Case" — a song in conversation with the "seat at the table" kind of thought canon. With work like this, Moonmill has a way of making us feel angry in that good way: clear-eyed about the hoop-jumping that still defines how women take up space in male-dominated industries, but not without fiery forward motion.

The relatability is infectious– as personal as these narratives are, they have a way of reaching past their specificity. Moments throughout the EP make us feel seen in the confusing little corners of life. The throughline is something we can feel, even without a recording studio in the picture: What is an artist supposed to do when they fall out of love with the music industry but remain in love with music?

Doesn’t that hurt? To love your instinct to create, but writhe in the environment we’re forced to grow things in?

For Moonmill, the love of making music seemed to take over. So perhaps the answer was simply to have someone to parse through it all with. Hand in hand, that comes through with what Collins and Hamada created with Soundbite Landfill. It’s not just a finger pointed at challenges, but a nuanced response packaged in a lovely listen.

For the rest of us, the answer might be hidden in the title track's own lyric:

Setting the table with yesterday’s tune
Fresh from the garden, never been heard
All are welcome, all may eat their fill
Will they stay to listen close, or clear their plate and walk away?

In every direction, there is delicious and nourishing art served to our hungry souls. We can listen closely and let ourselves be satiated. We can start here:

🎧 listen to moonmill's soundbite landfill where you listen 📻 keep up with moonmill on their Newsletter, instagram, TikTOK,  Youtube, & Website

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