I first came across Moses Luster in the late nineties when he was playing an off strip casino in Vegas. The place was a real dive where inveterate gamblers, who had long forgotten the glitz of the strip, came to drink and sink their last coins into the sea of hungry slots. Moses was unkempt, unrehearsed and the band were mostly terrible but he had a fire in his performance that I had seldom seen and his dark tales of the street struck a chord in my world-weary heart.
I didn't see or hear of Moses again for over a decade but happily, after years of touring, he has finally managed to get into the studio and for the first time record his inimitable style of road-hewn story telling. Low life crooks, doomed love affairs and a haunted past populate the lyrics whilst drummer Shaggy Jones and keyboard player Declan Swoosh beat their instruments into unwilling submission to create broken-down, lumbering beasts of backing tracks.
The ghosts of Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, Tom Waits and even William Shatner are all present but, whilst the music may make nods to these artists, the sound is something quite new. For me, Moses will be forever tied to the dirty downtown casino in which I first saw him, and in some ways he still sounds like he belongs there, amongst the detritus of the city, but now his sound is tougher and more confident, his fire burning even brighter. I just hope that we won't have to wait a decade for the next album.

Arthur Brown, Unclean Magazine


I'm The Lion music video: is.gd/FUjJJx

Lover music video: vimeo.com/33003952