Schmoon Reveals Title Track and Details for New Album ‘Pretty Darn Pretty’

Portland, Maine, indie folk singer-songwriter and filmmaker Matt Cascella is releasing his new album Pretty Darn Pretty (out Dec. 13) under the moniker Schmoon, his childhood nickname. Appropriately, the new LP taps into innocently playful vibes while capturing the fuzzy nostalgia of growing up. This is an album of characters; some are bad, and some are slightly better, but pieces of Cascella shine through with each song. He delves into the celebratory joy that comes with time-worn memories, our present anxieties and the legacy of our unknown futures.

Cascella cut his teeth in the New York City indie scene with his band Brooms while also recording solo under the name Owlbiter before moving to Portland, Maine, during the pandemic. He went back and forth to producer, engineer, and mixer Brendon Thomas’ studio in New Hampshire, and together they experimented, tried different tempos and keys until each song had felt like fate had bound them together.

Pretty Darn Pretty kicks off with the reflectively weary and wary folk tune “Sadly County Fair,” a tragic portrait of modern America written after Cascella’s strange visit to his local county fair. It’s a beautiful song that has a wry observational humour akin to Randy Newman. The acoustic guitar rhythmically chugs along with a percussion of brushes on a trash can. Otherworldly ambient electric guitar textures, reminiscent of John Cale or Big Thief’s Buck Meek, underscore this uncanny anthropological study of humanity. We’re given a peek into Cascella’s mental state while writing this song when he sings, “Cause when you’re sad / Sad places only make it worse.”

“There was a sadness to this experience, and I found it fascinating,” says Cascella. “Spending five dollars to take one shot at a basketball hoop. That’s America. I’m perplexed about our obsession with the American flag. I’m more and more confused about this country and my place in it.”

The album closes with the title track, “Pretty Darn Pretty,” a song that revels in the nostalgia of the ‘good ole days.’ Its thesis is that it’s nice to get that dopamine surge from reliving the hits of your past, but it becomes sad to wallow in your own history without looking forward. The refrain of “go back to the good ole days” repeats like a hypnotic suggestion, luring you into embracing a past that may have never existed at all.

This is a record of dark characters searching for the bright spots in a gloomy setting, yet the album musically never sets into that gloom. These characters resist the darkness, not allowing themselves to sink into a deep depression or throw in the towel altogether. Pretty Darn Pretty has a theme of capturing a spectrum of emotions that teeters on giving up or sulking in indifference, but it always finds the childlike wonder and positive sheen that the world has to offer.

Says Cascella:

“Brendon and I had fun making this record. I’m trying to enjoy the process of making art and having fun. It can be frustrating, jamming yourself up and being in your head, when it comes to recording. Now, I’m open to not controlling everything. These days I just want to make things with the people I care about.”

Pretty Darn Pretty Track Listing:

1. Sadly County Fair
2. Wait for the Mystery
3. Bowlegged Rider
4. Made It Up
5. Not a Girl
6. Birthday Pancakes
7. Danny Friend
8. Table for One
9. To a Butthead
10. Pretty Darn Pretty

Schmoon ‘Pretty Darn Pretty’ album artwork