Jono Mccleery - Moonlit Parade

Calm and sincere, with a restful voice and a focus on the essential, the music on Jono McCleery’s new album gets straight to the point, satisfying the listener with subtlety. The London-based singer and musician has deliberately adopted a no-frills approach on Moonlit Parade, successfully capturing what most people probably feel has been taken away from them by the 2020/2021 pandemic: a sense of closeness. Allowing someone to be close to you first of all means trusting them, and Jono trusts the music. He doesn’t need to ask anything of it, nor force it in any way. He doesn’t have to disguise it, he doesn’t have to distort it. And everything has gone to plan: the music is there and it gets under your skin.

The pure, Blues-inspired sound of Jono’s voice seeks to bare all, and his lyrics also reveal their poetry with refreshing simplicity. Together with his backing band, Dan See (drums), Dan Gulino (bass) and Steve Pringle (keys), Jono achieves a clarity on Moonlit Parade that is as forthright as it is self-contained. Every moment is given precisely what it needs – sometimes this is the solitude of the night hours, the unconstrained freedom to sing only what really counts, and sometimes it is the self-assured, easy flow of a groove drawn from the rhythm & soul of the ‘70s. And there is also an element of wanderlust – coming from far away in the distance, the synthesiser and piano sections are like precious memories that appear to expand the album sound beyond the horizon at certain crucial points, almost as if we were in a film.

Jono Mccleery has always been musically versatile. Collaborating with fellow artists is a natural part of his music's evolution, with Portico Quartet being a prime example.
Despite his ever-growing success, the albums There Is (2011), Pagodes (2015) and Here I am and There you Are (2020) demonstrate a relentless quest for expression and artistic freshness. Moonlit Parade is the logical outcome of many years’ work. And there is no room here for stagnation or clichés either.

Pre-order release date: April 29th 2022
Bonus: MP3 Download