The Aches and The End
Artist: Flint Moore
Release Date: 15 August 2024
We’re big fans of Flint Moore here at MJB. Big enough that when Francis and Lawrence (vocals/acoustic guitar, and lead guitarist) joined us for a chat, we were already halfway in love before Rux had the chance to hit the “record” button. Their music had us hooked, but the conversation sealed it. And now I find myself putting into words how their last year’s debut album, The Aches and The End, made me feel. Send help. Or tissues. Preferably both.
This was not an easy review to write. In fact, I started it in my kitchen, hollowed out by a rough afternoon that a cup of tea and a cold slice of toast couldn’t fix. Continued scribbling on a plane, quietly sobbing into my sleeve somewhere over the Med, and finally finished on a balcony in Tunisia, where the salt air and distant chaos finally allowed me to take a breath and tricked me into thinking I was momentarily healed. The Aches and The End came with me the whole way. I know music is meant to take you places, but sometimes, you need to take it with you.
The album opens with “The Aches”, which unfurls like a sigh and slowly becomes a roar. It rises into a swell of post rock yearning, Madeline Holland’s bass line guiding the song like a magnetic needle trembling towards release. From the get-go, there is a clarity in the way the instruments speak to each other; nothing wasted, nothing rushed, just a murmuration of emotion, drawn together by Francis’s voice gravity. It’s the same pull that kept bringing me back to “Incomplete”, which i’ve listened to so much last year it all but became part of my circadian rhythm. Some mornings my brain queued it up before the day even began, and I now recognise there is something deeply sensory about it: it triggers my synaesthesia in hues of amber, like sitting by a warm fire while the world happens wildly beyond the light. It doesn’t promise anything, but if offers comfort and reassurance, a reminder than even in all the noise, there is still a thread of order, something worth clinging on to.
What sets Flint Moore apart is their instinct for editing, and that’s not just cutting for time, but shaping a song until it says exactly what it must, then taking a step back. “Undermask” is a masterclass in this: tight, dynamic, full of moment yet never bloated. Every shift feels resolute, every riff warranted. It teases complexity but never tips into excess. Other songs take a more spacious route but are just as disciplined. The record breathes because the band give it room to do so. Each instrument takes off with intention, and nothing overstays its welcome. There’s a kind of duality at play here, a quiet trust running through each track – a belief that the listener plays an active part in the experience, that the thread can be followed without needing to spell everything out. That style of restraint, and ability to edit and still maintain dialogue, is rare.
Somewhere near the end, there is a moment where I could sense the faintest synth pop/ dark wave pulse beneath the surface, but then it lifts and soars into something resembling peace. Flint Moore don’t promise healing, but they remind one that movement is possible, even if it’s just the slow sway of your body as your heart crackles a little quieter.
The Aches and the End does not belong to one genre, but glides between them, in that liminal space where alternative collides with folk, winks at prog, brushes up against grunge. Really, it doesn’t seem concerned with definitions, as long as it sits with you awhile. In your kitchen. On your flight. On your balcony. In your anguish, and in your muffled hope. There is not a lot of music that truly walks the in between line the way Flint Moore do, floating between moods, ache, and deliverance. And even fewer manage to reflect something so familiar, insistently nudging you closer to yourself, until you realise you’ve been feeling more you all along.