“That changed everything for me. ‘It doesn’t hurt. I could play like this all day long. And it sounds great!’’ How a Hendrix hack helped The Collect Pond’s Danny Moffat play through his health issues

’90s music journalists coined the term “shoegaze” as a pejorative to describe bands such as Ride and My Bloody Valentine whose members were overly fixated on their effects pedals. Nowadays, musicians wear the tag proudly, perhaps none so much as singer-guitarist Danny Moffat, who leads the shoegazey-as-hell Boston-based outfit the Collect Pond.

“To me, ‘shoegaze’ means you have an aggressive wall of sound and you’re being very creative with layers of guitars, all of which is good,” Moffat says. “Plus, we tend to mix the vocals a little low, which is a shoegaze hallmark. We’re influenced by the whole scene, and we’re influencing it right back.”

Moffat and company (guitarist-bassist Ben Bonadies, keyboardist Roger Maranan and drummer Chris Anthony) have concocted something of a lo-fi masterpiece with their third album, Absence of Something.

There’s thrashy rave-ups (Modern Con, Cemetary Man), jangle and jagged gems (Every Little Thing Is the Same, Net 30 Invoice) and even a couple of whacked tone poems (You Could Murder Again, Revolution), all set to Moffat’s introspective lyrics. “I tend to write about very personal things, like unfortunate roommate situations,” he says.

Moffat pens the tunes, but he marvels at the unexpected ways his bandmates can improve the material.

“I showed them Every Little Thing Is the Same, and I played it down-up, down-up on the guitar,” he says. “I don’t think Ben can play upstrokes. He plays down-down-down like Johnny Ramone. But it was the perfect thing for that song; it sounded way better that way.”

The Collect Pond - Every Little Thing is the Same (music video) - YouTube

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Born with a rare spinal condition called spina bifida, Moffat has faced his share of challenges.

“I’m often in pain, so I can’t play heavy guitars or stand for long periods of time,” he says. Even playing typical barre chords has proved to be painful; pressure on his arm or wrist shoots right to his spine. Then one day a friend showed him how Jimi Hendrix would stretch his thumb around the neck of the guitar to play bass notes on the sixth string.

“That changed everything for me,” Moffat says. “I was like, ‘It doesn’t hurt. I could play like this all day long. And it sounds great!’’

• Absence of Something is out now via Candlepin
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.