After a nearly three-year long hiatus, the Cincinnati synth-pop band Moonbeau is back with new music. “Revive Me,” their first song since the break, has been heavily anticipated by longtime fans, the first glimpse into what’s to come from the duo this fall.
At just one minute and 37 seconds long, “Revive Me” is one of the shortest songs Moonbeau has released but it still packs a punch. The synth line is punchy and catchy all at once, and the building harmonies feel like the perfect introduction to their upcoming EP, which drops in September. The song overall evokes feelings of ’80s-inspired nostalgia while still finding a fresh sound.
This is the first release with new member Callie Budrick, who replaced keyboardist Claire Muenchen after her departure from the group in 2021. Although she’s new to the band, she has an extensive history with founding Moonbeau member Christian Gough. The two, who “have known each other for more than half our lives,” Budrick says, reconnected during the pandemic. She officially joined the band in September 2022.
“Our similar taste in music was actually one of the first things that brought Christian and me together as friends almost 15 years ago,” Budrick recalls. “We would stay up all night on Skype sending each other YouTube links to what we were listening to at the time.”
Although things have changed for Gough in recent years, “Revive Me” sounds like a return to his roots when the band first released its self-titled album. Thematically, the same is true. The song speaks about rebirth, uncertainty, and familiarity despite great change.
“I wrote “Revive Me” while things were really up in the air regarding Moonbeau,” he says. “I think 2020 changed everyone’s lives in some way, and for me, it had a huge effect on my personal life and professional life. I was feeling really uncertain about where things were headed and needed an outlet for that. The pandemic changed so many things in my personal life, and the music industry is totally different from what it was before 2020. Those feelings of uncertainty made it into the song, and I think we’re all familiar with those emotions.”
Both the new single and the upcoming EP are on Gough’s independent label Best Friend Records.
“[Revive Me is] the start of the EP and the restart of Moonbeau,” he says. “The rest of the EP is a story about growth. [It] ends without a resolution. A lot of people today are incredibly uncomfortable with the unknown. We’ve forgotten that it is okay to not know how the story ends–to just live in moments of ambiguity and be okay with that. And that is what “Revive Me” really encompasses: ambivalence and acceptance.”
For more information on Moonbeau, visit the group’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/moonbeauband.
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