Ever since time immortal, the combination of music with words has created a magical essence. The fusion of poetry and sound can often have an intoxicating effect on the listener, and if proof were needed look no further than Nina Antonia & The Lunar Moths’ album, Dropping Like Butterflies. Featuring Nina’s words set to the performance of an all star ensemble, this album blends both disciplines in just the right measure as is akin to what The Doors’ did with Jim Morrison on An American Prayer, albeit filtered through an English sensibility. Featuring a dozen tracks that shimmer like stars in a pitch black sky, Dropping Like Butterflies finds the Lunar Moths soaring towards the heavens.
As we know, musical chemistry is a fine art and putting several well renowned “names” together is no sure sign of success. Things could as easily pop and sparkle as fall flat and fizzle out, and there’s no way of knowing how those elements will fuse until they are locked together. Thankfully Neal X (Sigue Sigue Sputnik) and Chris Musto (Johnny Thunders) have found an easy equilibrium and, along with a cast of other musicians, create a sound that is at once melancholy and evocative. Those who only know Neal and Chris through their rowdy work with Starcat and Joe Strummer might be surprised at their tender rendering of these songs, and aided by Mike Scott’s expansive mix, they conjure a sound that’s in perfect sync with the album’s aesthetic. The music has an otherworldly quality that emanates as if from another dimension and exists in that magical place somewhere betwixt wake and sleep. In turn, it provides a perfect frame for Nina’s words, the two combining to make a very nocturnal sound, and whilst Dropping Like Butterflies is not a concept album per se, it has themes that echo throughout (along with that overarching aesthetic) that makes it a cohesive listen from start to finish.
Mike Scott’s mix separates the instruments at vast distances and wending their way through them are Nina’s vocals. Opening track ‘Shell-Shocked And Shoeless’ finds Nina floating ghostlike, as if a spectre floating amongst all the characters who inhabit a midnight cityscape. Armen Ra’s theremin (perhaps the most ghostly of instruments) peppers the record and adds to that nightly feel, and the characters Nina writes about are indeed like ghosts and exist on the edge of society. Wastrels, whores and wayfarers, tortured artists and the homeless are ever present, yet they are routinely ignored and thus become invisible. Like a magician breathing life into a golem, Dropping Like Butterflies makes these characters three-dimensional, Nina’s words painting them with sympathy as opposed to the usual disdain. The result is a very cinematic affair (albeit of the kitchen sink drama type), with the likes of ‘The Night Botherers’ and ‘The Fateful Muses’ planting strong images in your mind’s eye.
It is with the epic ‘Lunar Moths’ that this album comes to a wordy finale, and its conclusion will leave a huge void that this album once filled. But don’t worry, you’ll soon be hitting play again.
- Dropping Like Butterflies is released via Creation Youth on 26th June 2026.
- Official Website
Track List:
- Shell-Shocked And Shoeless
- Chatterton, Euston
- Farewell Androgyny
- The Undertaker’s Lunch Break
- Here Is Dusk
- The Night Botherers
- Lodgers
- Joe Dallesandro
- The Fateful Muses
- Love You Mate
- Thames’ Doom
- Lunar Moths
