Slark Moan is the New York based, indie rock artist and alter ego of multi-instrumentalist Mark Sloan. Their music is a cocktail of angular indie-rock hooks, colorful chord progressions, and virtuosic jazz solos, bathing in a pool of guitar forward psychedelia.

Slark Moan spent much of the last decade as a session guitarist in Nashville, Tennessee, collaborating with acclaimed Americana and indie acts, including: Torres, Margo Price, Erin Rae, and SG Goodman. The dexterous guitar style that Slark Moan developed during those early Nashville years seeps into their solo productions, complementing the melodic intuition of a veteran of the stage and recording studio.

Slark Moan’s debut album “Superstition For the Consumer Romantic” released in late 2019, received praise from American Songwriter Magazine and NPR affiliate KCRW. The album was a concept record, which Slark Moan describes as, “largely dissecting the search for validation within a superficial capitalistic culture.” 

Following the release, Slark Moan embarked on a nationwide tour playing over 50 shows in 22 states. The tour abruptly came to an end in early March 2020 when news of the global pandemic broke and the threat of a national shutdown hung in the air.

“I had just played San Diego, and was in the middle of the desert when I realized the gravity of the situation” Slark Moan recalls. “I was 2000 miles from home and would have to cancel the rest of the tour. So, I put on a podcast and drove through the night until I found a place to stash my car and flew the rest of the way back.”  

Once home, Slark Moan quickly watched the world, and their industry, come to a halt. No one would be playing shows anytime soon. Rather than accepting stagnation in a cramped apartment, they dove into a new creative direction and started writing and recording with prolificacy never before experienced. “At first, I think it was a way to cope with being out of work and facing so much uncertainty, but soon I started to see an album taking shape. A sort of emotional narrative that reaches for clarity and acceptance, even if it never fully arrives.” 

What came out of a year of solitude and cathartic wood shedding was Slark Moan’s best work yet. “Four Horses,” a record born out of an apocalypse, inverts perspective to an examination of catastrophes on the micro level. The lyrics grapple with the loss of dreams, plans, and control, all aspects of the journey that made each of us feel like our world was ending. Slark Moan reminds us that the passage of time is cruelly yet beautifully irreversible, stretching out a hand as we walk through our own internal apocalypse and grapple with the reality that the world will never be the same.

Upon completion of “Four Horses”, Slark Moan relocated to NYC and reconstructed their live band with jazz musicians they met at various jam sessions, and gigs around the city. A new sound began to develop in New York’s rock clubs of the Lower East Side. It was a sound that married the hard edge of early jazz informed punk pioneers, Television, with fluid improvisations channeling Coltrane at his most melodic moments, overlayed by an opaque nostalgic 90’s alternative filter. The result created an energy that Slark Moan wanted to capture on recordings. They rebuilt their studio in a Greenwich Village apartment and began stockpiling songs, honing in on a sound that captures the essence of guitar music, infuses subtleties of rhythmic and harmonic coloration, and walks hand in hand with bold virtuosity. The resulting sound, a delicate balance of athleticism with no shortage of taste, proves that much is left unsaid in the canon of rock and roll.