We last caught up with Moon Taxi back in February, when the Nashville alt-indie band rolled out a new brand of “Classics”, a breezy carefree joint that threw it back to the long-lost innocent joy of the ’90s. It served as the first taste of Moon Taxi’s eclectic new sixth album, the summer’s Set Yourself Free, and now Boston gets a live serving of the goods as the band rolls into the Paradise Rock Club tonight (November 8), the latest stop on the three-month Set Yourself Free Tour.
But “Classics” is just one flavor of the album; elsewhere, “Evergreen” leans into bluegrass and more organic rhythms, while “Lay Low” shines through a glossy ’10s indie filter. Listening to a Moon Taxi record is like experiencing a few different bands at once, held together by a sentimental core that extends through their spectrum of sound and reflects a 15-year creative career. And the live show should be no different.
“We didn’t exactly sit down and have an agenda for what the album was going to sound like,” says lead guitarist Spencer Thomson. “We just worked on songs for a long period of time and then the last couple of months have been more of a discovery process — discovering what we’ve actually been doing and trying to make sense of the whole thing. So instead of going for some goal that we set out for, it was more just exploring things and seeing how they all work together. We just leave all our opinions in and that makes it more like a Moon Taxi record — it’s all our inside input rather than outside input.”
MOON TAXI + THE STEWS :: Wednesday, November 8 at The Paradise Rock Club, 967 Commonwealth Ave. in Boston, MA :: 7 p.m., 18-plus, $30 :: Event info :: Advance tickets