MOVIELAND – Now & Then (604 Records, 2025)
Shoegaze, Alt-Rock, Indie Rock, Post-Punk | For fans of Slowdive, Jesus and Mary Chain, BRMC
Vancouver’s MOVIELAND resurface from the reverb-drenched shadows with Now & Then, a sweeping collection that bridges decades and continents, marking their most expansive statement to date. Released via 604 Records on May 2, 2025, this new LP doesn’t just pick up where the band left off—it remaps their sonic history with a clarity and urgency that feels both familiar and startlingly fresh.
Following the 2024 archival release Then & Now, which reintroduced MOVIELAND’s foggy melancholia to a new wave of dreamers, Now & Then flips the lens forward. Born out of a casual reissue conversation with 604’s Jonathan Simkin, frontman Alan D. Boyd took the opportunity to go far beyond a few bonus tracks. Armed with an EP budget, he delivered a full-length instead—because when the muse calls, you don’t ask for permission.
Built from fragments gathered over 30 years—scribbled in notebooks, demoed in dim basements, and shaped across London, Edmonton, and Vancouver—Now & Then is as much a personal time capsule as it is a cohesive record. Tracks like “Just a Second,” a wiry, punchy alt-rock blast written in a flash and recorded almost as quickly, showcase Boyd’s raw instinct. Meanwhile, the reimagined “Save My Soul” (a deep cut from a 1998 Nottingham session) gains new dimensions with added vocals from Charlene Rule and guitar flourishes courtesy of Freddie Cowan (The Vaccines).
The album is rich with guest appearances—Rex Roulette (Eagles of Death Metal), Ev Laroi (Idyl Tea), and Tom Murray (Old Reliable) all leave their mark, while original MOVIELAND members John and Clancy contribute rhythm parts from afar. These contributions breathe life into tracks like the anthemic “C’mon Let’s Go,” tailor-made for long drives into the unknown, and the cinematic “Latin Quarter,” a swirling ode to Paris that conjures both romance and restlessness.
But this isn’t just a nostalgia trip. MOVIELAND’s evolution is evident in the record’s fluid blend of shoegaze textures, punchy hooks, and post-punk grit. The fingerprints of icons like My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr are still present, but Boyd’s songwriting leans into more immediate terrain, unafraid to sharpen the edges or strip things down when needed. “Trying to perform this material solo forced me to reconsider how to build those layered sounds with just a voice and a guitar,” Boyd notes. “But when we played a full band set back in Edmonton… something just clicked.”
MOVIELAND may have been born in the early ’90s, but Now & Then proves they’re not a band stuck in the past. If anything, they’re reclaiming it, reshaping it, and charging ahead. And with a vault of 15 unreleased songs waiting in the wings, it sounds like Boyd isn’t finished telling the story just yet.
