A band like MOONBAND defies pigeonholing. Hailing from the city of Zhaoqing in southern China’s Guangdong Province, the band came together in 2012 and rocked in a range of genres: math, post, soft and psychedelic. Their fanbase fell in love with the youthful energy and softly sung lyrics of their 2017 EP 便利店女孩 (“Convenience Store Girl”). In the years since, as the band’s fame expanded beyond the south, their sound ventured onto new and interesting roads as well. Their 2022 full-length album 大众审美 (“Popular Aesthetics”) is an eclectic mix of modern and retro elements, expertly combined. The dreamy, floating-through-the-galaxy vaporwave-esque opener “Prelude” is a gentle invitation to an enrapturing journey of surprises, from an onslaught of electronic beats in “Home” to the throwback vibes of “法兰西斯宾馆” (“Francis Hotel”), which transports the listener to the ’80s disco scene and delivers on lyrics promising “dancing all the night”. The track most in line with the mainstream tastes promised by the title might be “约会改明天” (“Postpone Till Tomorrow”), in which the band leaves their Cantonese lyrics behind to deliver a Mandarin ballad. If their self-released 2017 debut album 384400km (the distance from the Earth to the Moon) is the band’s one small step, then their major-label debut album is their giant leap to self-awareness and self-discovery. As the band states in the closing track, “It’s Alright To Be Here”, “The same thing keeps coming and going by/It’s so hard to catch it,” a sentiment that sums up the album’s aesthetic statement as well as the band’s experimentation over the past decade.