SEAN SOLOMON - The World Is Not Good Enough

After two promising but not entirely focused albums, post-punk band Moaning have added their name to the ever-growing list of acts sacrificed on the altar of contemporary rock's next big thing.

With their run on Sub Pop over, the three musicians went looking for new paths: while bassist Pascal Stevenson reinvented himself under the moniker Fashion Club, offering a darker take on Moaning's sound, guitarist and singer Sean Solomon's path back into the current rock scene proved longer and more complicated.

Sean dusted off his training at the CalArts experimental animation program, directing videos for artists like Unknow Mortal Orchestra and Run The Jewels, before returning to music with the help of Shannon Lay and producer Jarvis Taveniere (Whitney, Waxahatchee). The video for “Car Crash” brought the first positive response from listeners, along with a flurry of offers from record labels, and Sean Solomon's debut solo album is finally here.

Released by ANTI, “The World Is Not Good Enough” is a genuinely intriguing and ambitious project. It's a record that confronts head-on the demons and shadows of an artist who has battled mental health struggles and addiction. The cover art is no accident: beneath the deceptive guise of a cartoon lies a playful, bizarre kind of symbolism, and the album's nearly thirty minutes are every bit as layered. Sean Solomon narrates dilemmas and troubles, sometimes genuinely painful ones, with irony and a bittersweet sound that draws equally on Elliott Smith-style songwriting and power-pop's featherlight charm.

It's striking how much the American musician has grown as a songwriter: the first few unhurried notes and sharp lyrics of “Car Crash” are enough to reveal both the naive charm and the emotional intensity of “The World Is Not Good Enough”.

An aching, slightly nasal voice, drums with a dry, decisive snap, guitar tones that stay delicate even when the volume climbs: these are the basic building blocks of Sean Solomon's songs, but it's the meticulous attention to detail, the painstaking fine-tuning of arrangements — sometimes as intricate as on the darker, more sorrowful “Black Hole” — and the genuinely compelling videos accompanying the songs that reveal a distinctive artistic voice impossible to ignore.

What's left to do is simply enjoy the powerful horn-driven staging of “Shooting Star”, the infectious southern-rock lightheartedness of “Remember”, the 70s country-rock romanticism of “Finish Line”, and the delicate, fragile poetry of the anguished “Overdose” and the evocative “Korpo” — though it's the folk-pop of “Postcard”, with its irresistible refrain, that earns the title of best track on the record.

Sean Solomon has finally found a personal, convincing artistic language, and even if this debut's brevity leaves plenty of questions hanging for the future, it would be foolish to overlook its beauty.

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13/05/2026