The era of knightly records and dragon chronicles is over
The age of Camelot’s monarchs has faded
We head toward Hel
We ache to become someone on a road leading somewhere
This record captures what happens when we run out of breath
This record feels like a forbidden Four Loko
This record stands as the Columbus Street Burger King
This record is Purgatorio
This record will drive you to chant in praise
Heavy is the head that wears the hat
May you savor the heavenly flavors as we walk hand in hand
as saxophones sigh and trumpets thunder
Cast me out and bore a hole in my head
We’re heading home, Sally
So announces Emily Moales’ latest project as Star Moles, Highway To Hell, released through the home-studio collective Historic New Jersey. On Feb. 26, Highway To Hell marked her 44th new release and her ninth official album since she began recording and issuing music from her teenage bedroom in 2017. If you’re new to Star Moles, that opening couplet may sound like gobbledygook, yet it marks a decisive shift for a songwriter whose work previously grew from a dialogue with folk epics and fairy tales.
Highway To Hell is the statement of an artist who has tried every trick in the book — concept albums, GarageBand experiments, analog capture, over-the-top synths, piano ballads — and now seeks a clear, unfussy statement that remains irresistibly charming. Listen to Highway To Hell and it’s striking how pared-down Star Moles feels here. The artist’s homegrown, winy whimsy still radiates through a 10-song suite that grapples with life in Philadelphia she’s come to adore, alongside the planetary polycrisis that tempers her joy. Even at a measured pace, all the elements are present.
Moales didn’t come from a famously musical clan, but music has long threaded through her family’s fabric. Her parents lean toward classic rock with a soft spot for late-2000s anthems by Wolfmother and the Chicks, while her grandmother’s devout Christianity surfaced in Sunday worship singing. If you wind the family tree to its furthest reaches, you’ll encounter Red Sovine, the truck-driving country icon who rubbed elbows with Hank Williams and Webb Pierce on his ascent.
Where Sovine’s best-known hits are spoken-word vignettes, Moales tends to coax her voice toward its fullest potential. “I’ve always been a Kate Bush fan, quite plainly,” she explains. “When I first heard her, I realized I didn’t have to sound cool and laid-back all the time. You can sound wondrous and remarkable expressing everything you can do with your voice.” Whether she leans into chorus-drenched psych-pop or keeps it stark with guitar and voice, Moales favors a bold vocal presence. It’s less about drawing you in and more about grabbing your wrist and pulling you into the Star Moles universe, whether you’re ready or not. She also cites Enya, Ty Segall, and MGMT as influences, and you can hear their divergent approaches to mind-bending, immersive music threaded through Moales’ catalog.
Moales wasn’t thrilled by the formal avenues for pursuing music in suburban New Hampshire, but a friend from a music-camp circle introduced her to DIY musicians who recorded and released their work with tools she already possessed. “When I discovered that people could make incredible albums by themselves, I realized I had something I could use to record, and I should do that,” she recalls. She looked up to Foxygen and Todd Rundgren for their homegrown ingenuity and became the artist she wanted to see in the world with GarageBand.
During a gap year after high school, Moales grew comfortable with home recording, releasing mini-albums on Bandcamp such as the swoogh!, god made you 2 be famous, Be My Valentine, and The Second Coming Of Helen Burns, spread across about six months with loosies and covers woven in. “I’m easily daunted by new technology,” Moales admits, “so when I recorded myself, I leaned on my favorite keyboard and the default GarageBand plugins.” The Second Coming Of Helen Burns gets its sun-drenched, psychedelic gloss from Moales’ fascination with GarageBand’s chorus effect. “When I began recording, I was drawn to the entire range of synth sounds,” she says. “I liked anything that sounded odd and not purely man-made.”
While guarding some privacy as she recorded at home and later in her first year of college, Moales formed a friendship with Kevin Basko, a New Jersey-based musician who once toured with Foxygen and who built a home studio called Historic New Jersey to support friends’ music and his Rubber Band Gun project. To call Rubber Band Gun prolific would be an understatement; by the time you finish one disc, Basko will likely have released another full-length. Moales had been following Basko because she admired Foxygen. “He told me he checked out my music after seeing my Barbra Streisand profile picture on Twitter, and he’s a huge fan,” she recalls. In 2018, Basko invited Moales to New Jersey to lay down what became Camelot, her first official full-length, with a handful of collaborators.
Crafting Camelot helped establish the creative synergy Moales and Basko still share in the row house they now occupy in South Philadelphia. Moales aims to record a solid demo as soon as an idea appears because she grows “easily bored” with her own ideas. “I’d describe Kevin as someone who’s intensely focused,” she says. “He’s a true music lover and lifelong musician. All he wants to do is create and record music… I wouldn’t call him a perfectionist, but he cares deeply about the music you’re making with him.” She’ll bring demos to Basko, and they’ll discard the ones that are too pristine. Together they seek ideas that need a touch of care, where both have room to make meaningful edits or rearrangements. As lifelong proponents of DIY releasing, they tend to view over-polished demos as finished products better suited for looser releases or for inclusion in Moales’ growing stash of self-recorded albums.
Between their first collaboration at the Basko family home and a summer writing-and-recording sprint in the Pennsylvania mountains that yielded 2019’s The Magic Of Believing What You See, Moales and Basko forged a bond so strong that they decided to relocate to Philadelphia, where their basement now brims with an array of recording gear. Not long after settling in, the world went into lockdown to slow the spread of a novel respiratory illness.
“Though it was terrifying, staying indoors proved pivotal for developing Historic New Jersey into what it is today,” Moales says. The home studio has evolved into a collective space shared by Moales, Basko, and a rotating group of friends. Bands like Lightheaded and Thank You Thank You have produced some of their best work there. In recent years, Historic New Jersey has functioned as a label for Sam & Louis Sullivan and Hot Machine, the quirky art-rock duo of Basko and Moales. What began as a one-person mobile operation has grown into a sought-after, full-fledged home-based enterprise.
Highway To Hell isn’t the first Star Moles record Moales has cut under the Historic New Jersey banner, but it’s certainly the most quintessentially Historic New Jersey release she’s issued. Moales crafted and tracked the album with the label’s in-house lineup — Basko, Sam Sullivan, Jem Seidel, and herself — and it arrived as Historic New Jersey’s profile as a label steadily grew.
Historically, Star Moles projects are richly adorned, often drawing on literature (Arthurian legend on Camelot, Andreas Capellanus on Snack Monster). When discussing her earlier records, Moales spends more time thinking about how she intended each album to fit into her broader arc than about the emotions she was experiencing at the time: she views The Magic Of Believing What You See as the record that proved she could be a serious musician; she regards Three Chimes, At Silent Palace! as the Hounds Of Love to Fight Or Flight Or Freeze’s The Dreaming. She explains how she missed her sci‑fi synth-pop phase and decided to recapture it by assembling scattered recordings into Multidimension Sugarbliss. Each track carries its own emotional contour, but Star Moles’ projects tend to reflect questions of aesthetic stance, literary exploration, or recording strategy.
As noted in the Bandcamp write-up, Highway To Hell trims back those fantastical experiments in favor of something more immediate. “The simpler arrangements are what make this record feel so different from what I’ve done before,” Moales elaborates. “I didn’t feel the need to stuff every space, and leaving room forces you to listen to what’s happening.” It wouldn’t be fair to call every project maximalist, but Moales describes each song as having extra effects or instrumental moves designed to shout, “Hey! Look over here.” Highway To Hell is stripped down; you can hear it right away in the opening track, “The End.” It’s simply her vivid vocal delivery, a piano, and a spare drumbeat, which allows one of her strongest opening couplets to shine: “If I put my shirt on backward one more time I swear/ This will be the darkest Tuesday in a thousand years.”
Highway To Hell isn’t wholly free of fantastical imagery, but Moales places it beside the mundane realities of her life. In “Halo” she confesses lines about wrestling with a “bagel machine” while drafting secret letters, pointing to a gap between worlds that feel like scenes from a lower-budget thriller. Songs like “Real Magic” place selling mystical wares in a retail context, underscoring that retail life can intersect with artistry in surprising ways. “It’s strange to believe that I’m one person who does a retail shift, makes music, and hangs out with friends at a bar. It’s odd that all of that comes from the same person,” Moales reflects. Highway To Hell confronts the odd sensation of sliding between different versions of yourself to navigate distinct environments. Is it unsettling or alienating? A little, but isn’t there something almost magical about our own adaptability?
Highway To Hell’s most striking moments emerge when songs hold a quiet, spacious presence, giving some of Star Moles’ most piercing lines room to breathe. “Overdog” is essentially a mid-tempo piano ballad where Moales sits in a comfortable midrange, allowing her to scrutinize the abuses of the powerful and declare, “I need you the way I need a hole in my head/ I need a hole in my head/ How else could I sing?”
The meandering guitar and percussion on “Time” anchor the track in a cool groove that yields to Moales’ steadfast resolve: “I don’t want to hear from you again/ You take all my time/ Not another tear for you.” It’s simple and memorable. Star Moles often produce songs with that effect — favorites like “Agravaine” and “Talking Is Torture” come to mind — but “Time” feels understated and openly ambivalent. Highway To Hell grants far more room for the album’s charms to breathe than its predecessors, which balanced ostentation with wit. The result is a gripping, overwhelming listen that still lands with a humane, clarifying honesty.
“I’ll surely chase other sounds again,” Moales says, “but I also feel this record learned from all that came before.” Since embracing home recording in her teenage room, she’s pursued new extremes of sound, process, and theme. In doing so, she’s built Star Moles into a tribute to offbeat songwriting that’s cerebral yet incandescent, reminiscent of Kate Bush but carrying a vibe more akin to MGMT or Cameron Winter.
Highway To Hell offers a window into Moales’ life and the ideas that keep her awake at night. It’s gently confessional, dressed in a Joni Mitchell-like whimsy. Watching an artist zigzag through sounds and motifs to signal new eras can be exhilarating (think Björk’s late-era shifts), but watching one return to basics can feel like a collective exhale. That’s precisely the sweet spot Star Moles occupies after all these years.
Highway To Hell is available now through Historic New Jersey. Purchase it here.
