“Maybe tonight/Maybe we will see the light.”
These words, from the song “We Close Our Eyes So We Can See,” hold a sense of possibility, though never a guarantee, in reaching for something beyond the mundane. Perhaps that’s what has been so key about the work of Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson as Hammock. Now over twenty years together as a working duo, Hammock continue their remarkable string of sonic explorations with one of their most boldly titled albums, The Second Coming Was A Moonrise, released on their own Hammock Music label.
Byrd and Thompson, both primarily guitarists, have found their musical bonds becoming ever stronger as their shared work grows even more dramatic and richer over the years, pursuing a feeling of sweeping, shimmering sonic awe that can never simply be summed up as anything other than itself. “Beatless ambient, post-rock, shoegaze, neoclassical,” says Byrd in conversation, noting tags they’ve been given. “Or as some of our listeners call it, loud Hammock or quiet Hammock. What all our work has in common is a distinctive sonic blueprint.”
The Second Coming Was A Moonrise continues those sensations of exploration, feeling at once like one of their most intimate releases while exploring the rich sense of majesty that they can create in turn. Following soon after their 2025 release Nevertheless, their self-production, in combination once again with mixer Emery Dobyns to accentuate the textured flow of their work, covers ten songs that sound like deep spaceflight in many forms, whether it’s the extended drone rise concluding “The Unsetting Sun” or the vast sensations of “Everything You Love Is Buried In The Ground Or Scattered Into Space.”
When asked about this sense of reaching out to the beyond, Byrd discusses the striking origin of the album title, also the name of the album’s longest song and one of its most calmly powerful. One night when younger, he and a friend, while indulging in some LSD, were momentarily affected by a light in the night sky, the fundamentalist Christianity of their upbringing leading them to expect the Rapture at any moment. It was, Byrd quickly realized, a moonrise in the end, but as he notes, the mere fact that they had that as their baseline was grounds for a reflective moment:
“If anyone grew up a fundamentalist, maybe this album can be a soundtrack for letting go of toxic shame and bad religion, while holding onto what is good, beautiful and true. Seeing and experiencing a moonrise is a miracle in itself. How many times do we miss what’s there or what’s being said by someone because we assume or believe something else is happening or being said?”
As has often been the case with their work, much of The Second Coming is instrumental or only adds wordless vocal sighs and textures, though always with titles chosen with intent. When the words come, they hit all the harder. “Like Sinking Stars” interprets the experience of a tornado hitting Thompson’s home and studio, while Byrd revisited more of his drug-fueled escapes from narrow-minded small town repression with “Chemicals Make You Small.” The latter features two notable guests that aren’t strangers to similar sonic and youthful experiences: Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips, adding vocals and keyboards. Other returning guest performers include regular collaborator Matt Kidd of Slow Meadow adding strings and guitar, Deserta’s Matthew Doty on synths and guitar, Chad Howat playing keyboards and bass and Jake Finch adding some remarkable drumming.
It all adds up into another involving example of Hammock’s ability to embrace seriousness with warmth, a dreaminess that has heft, a beautiful glaze of sound that invites reflection and connection. When asked to describe what Hammock aims for now with The Second Coming Was A Moonrise and with where their creative journey has taken them, Byrd talks about creating something that “feels like a combination of what we’ve done through the years, with maybe a little more solidity,” appropriate in a time of personal changes in their lives and in the unsettled common state of the world in these years.
“So much is missed and looked over due to the tunnel vision created by politics, social media, algorithms, silos of misinformation, and perpetual distraction,” Byrd adds. “I would hope this could be an album that sounds like sitting on the roof of a car, when being young was serious and one night was like the end of the world. In a way, it’s the same old Hammock but new and maybe even incautious.”
