Seattle-based, Austin, TX-born guitar player, singer and songwriter Ian Moore makes the proverbial renaissance man look lazy. His new album Toronto, out May 25 on Last Chance Records in the US and on Rough Trade in Europe, comes on the heels of Strange Days, his most successful record since his eponymous debut. Despite a never-ending cycle of touring, Moore offers a new release of bright, blazing rock-n-roll that combines his legendary guitar prowess with radio-friendly songs that showcase his elastic, soul-inflected vocals.
For years, Moore has had his eyes on the challenges faced by musicians of every stripe, having experienced the spectrum of artist successes and tribulations over a nearly 30-year career. In response, he founded the artist’s healthcare alliance SMASH (Seattle Musicians Access to Sustainable Healthcare) and has joined the board of NARAS for the Pacific Northwest as governor and head of the advocacy committee.
Moore deviated from his initial blues-oriented guitar sound on subsequent records, touching on graceful pop songs and the psychedelic as well as British pub rock and deep Americana. Toronto and its 6 tracks represents those influences in such a way that they have informed his songwriting, but is likely more recognizable as a strong collection of the kind of guitar rock his core fan base would respond to immediately.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the video for “You Gotta Know”, a triumphant song that finds Moore lampooning rich, entitled hipster kids who, in his own words, “get their marching orders from Pitchfork and fill their brains with coke and MDMA, looking for soul and depth,” Moore explains. “The chorus is a way of claiming my space as a person that has been slogging it out, in and out of fashion for most of my career, with a deeper sense of music, style and substance than the people that might quickly write me off.” The song itself is a loose and rollicking rock and roll romp with a sound that veers into punk terrain. It also finds Moore throwing in trippy, Jimi Hendrix-like verses and of course a gloriously vicious guitar solo before ultimately screaming out the chorus like a wild man. The song is a perfect encapsulation of everything that Moore does well, from writing infectious, punchy lyrics to shredding guitar like it’s nobody’s business.
On the video and the song, Moore offers more insight, describing it as “an outside looking in song about rich kids, entitlement, and group thought. The perspective is of someone young enough to be frustrated by it all but not old enough to understand what the root of that frustration actually is. I collaborated with director Abraham Vanselow to get a day in the life view of an 18 year old Seattle kid.”
WATCH:
