Shannon & The Clams Announce ‘The Moon Is in the Wrong Place,’ Share Title Track

Out of unimaginable loss comes the latest — and most personal — album from Shannon & The Clams. Produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, The Moon Is in the Wrong Place is the garage-psych quartet’s seventh full-length, and their third to be released via Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound.

In August 2022, just weeks before their wedding, frontwoman Shannon Shaw’s fiancé (and close friend of the band) Joe Haener was killed in a car accident. The Moon Is in the Wrong Place is titled for something Haener said shortly before his death: “He was trying to ask me what was going on astrologically. He said, ‘What’s going on in the stars right now?’ He was basically asking if Mercury was in retrograde,” Shaw recalls in a band bio. “But he was like, ‘What is it you say? The moon is in the wrong place?’ I was like, ‘That is so weird and cool.’ And he turned out to be right — the moon IS in the wrong place.”

Out of a loss so shocking, it rearranged their personal cosmos, Shannon & The Clams — Shaw, guitarist Cody Blanchard, keyboardist Will Sprott and drummer Nate Mahan — wrung an album, exploring “loss, time, love and resilience” through their “most ambitious, emotionally searing recording to date,” as per a press release. “We all felt the urgency of making something that reckoned with this meteor that smashed into our planet,” Sprott said in the band’s bio. “This is the most focused record we’ve ever done, as far as everything coming from a singular traumatic event.”

Our first preview of the album is its title track, released this week alongside a music video (dir. Bobbi Rich) in which Shannon & The Clams venture — where else — into space, the better to acquaint themselves with the new shape of the stars. The song itself is driving and powerful, with racing hand percussion and staccato guitars creating an urgency befitting the unstoppable force of its emotions. “The sun burned down when you left this world / Now there is some imposter in the sky,” Shaw sings, sounding angry, heartbroken and resolute all at once. “Look for you in starlight, eyeballs searching skies for satellites.”

Shannon & The Clams incorporated improvisation to an uncharacteristic extent in writing and preparing to record their new album, as if pulling back some cosmic curtain to see what might emerge, and Shaw’s addition of an Omnichord to the band’s arsenal lent it another new dimension. They recorded The Moon Is in the Wrong Place in Nashville at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound Studios, like 2018’s Onion and 2021’s Year of the Spider before it.

The band will tour throughout 2024 in support of their new album—tickets are on sale now and the album is available for preorder. Find The Moon Is in the Wrong Place’s tracklist and their tour dates down below.

01. The Vow

02. The Hourglass

03. Big Wheel

04. Oh So Close, Yet So Far

05. UFO

06. What You’re Missing

07. Real Or Magic

08. The Moon Is In The Wrong Place

09. So Lucky

10. Dalí’s Clock

11. Bean Fields

12. In The Grass

13. Golden Brown

14. Life Is Unfair

Shannon & The Clams Tour Dates:

3/13-3/16 – Austin, TX @ SXSW

4/5-4/8 – Hot Springs, AR @ Ecliptic Festival

5/23 – Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups

5/24 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit Hall

5/25 – Toronto, ON @ The Concert Hall

5/26 – Montréal, QC @ Les Foufounes Électriques

5/28 – Boston, MA @ The Sinclair

5/30 – Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw

5/31 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer

6/1 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat

6/4 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle

6/5 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel

6/6 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West

6/7 – Nashville, TN @ The Basement East

6/8 – Pelham, TN @ The Caverns *

6/10 – St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway

6/11 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall

6/12 – Madison, WI @ Majestic Theatre

6/13 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line

10/3 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern Theatre

10/4 – San Diego, CA @ The Observatory North Park

10/5 – Mesa, AZ @ The Nile Theater

10/7 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater

10/8 – Denver, CO @ The Gothic Theatre

10/10 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Soundwell

10/11 – Boise, ID @ Shrine Social Club Ballroom

10/15 – Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw Theatre

10/16 – Seattle, WA @ The Neptune Theatre

10/19 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater

* w/ Murder By Death