At the heart of Minor Moon’s open-ended and knotty country rock songs is an undeniably inviting lightness. While the Chicago-based songwriter and bandleader Sam Cantor writes impressionistic songs about the end of the world, they’re wrapped in such a warm blanket of lush guitars and pastoral twang that they always leave a hopeful spark. On the band’s latest LP, The Light Up Waltz, Cantor sings of the fantastical in magical traveling bands, swaying bridges, and aquamarine metamorphoses – but this sweeping sci-fi folktale is imbued with an intimacy that’s fundamentally focused on human questions about who we are and how we reinvent ourselves when everything crumbles around us.

Cantor produced The Light Up Waltz, which was mixed with Dave Vettraino, and he’s joined by bassist Jason Ashworth, pedal steel player Max Subar, drummer and percussionist Sam Subar, and guitarist Chet Zenor. 'TLUW' also features performances from V.V. Lightbody, Sima Cunningham, Dustin Laurenzi, Elizabeth Moen, Macie Stewart, Hunter Diamond, Lia Kohl, and Andrew Sa. Minor Moon has been consistently one of Chicago’s most thrilling live acts and here, the freewheeling immediacy of their stage show comes first, with the band often settling into a stargazing groove and never letting up. It’s persistently disarming and danceable. “This is the kind of record that I've been writing towards for a long time,” says Cantor. “This feels like a culmination for Minor Moon.”