Tom Lark Announces New Album, Moonlight Hotel

4 February 2025

Shannon Fowler  has announced his second full-length album as Tom Lark, Moonlight Hotel, along with dates for his first live shows in Aotearoa since May 2024.

Moonlight Hotel sees the artist explore the parallels between his family's historical displacement following the 1929 earthquake that destroyed Murchison – a pioneer town in the upper West Coast of the South Island – and his own following the 2011 earthquakes that levelled much of Ōtautahi.

The second single from the LP, 'Rock & Roll Baby' is due out on 14 February and also captures a poignant acceptance of the unpredictability of a musical life. The track follows 'Dumb Luck', which was released in April 2024 as a sweetener for a UK tour.

'Dumb Luck' was the first taste of new material from Tom Lark since 2023’s Brave Star, the Ōtautahi-born, Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist’s debut album.

Earning him a finalist nod for the 2024 Taite Music Prize and Te Kaipuoro Taketake Toa | Best Folk Artist at the 2024 Aotearoa Music Awards, Brave Star was a return for Fowler – who had previously released two eponymous EPs before taking time out to work on his pop craft as Shannon Matthew Vanya.

Brave Star also won Tom Lark an APRA Silver Scroll Award Top 20 nomination in 2023, care of its second single 'Live Wires', and reviews like these:

"Brave Star is an album adrift on a sea of memory bliss, cleverly produced and like a sonic mood-piece. It's an album which gives dream pop a very good name."
– Graham Reid, Elsewhere / The Listener

"Brave Star is the work of a well-rounded songwriter, as comfortable in the pop realm as he is crafting country-inflected folk-rock tunes, casual and confessional in equal measure."
– Tony Stamp, RNZ The Sampler

Steeped in the Tom Lark persona's whimsical yet pragmatic sensibility, Moonlight Hotel is an evolution of what Brave Star introduced: sun-soaked odes to taking things as they come, and rolling with the punches.

“When I began writing ‘Dumb Luck’ I was thinking a lot about perseverance but also how funny ‘dumb luck’ is as a phrase,” says Fowler of the album's first single. “Despite hard work, sometimes things don’t pay off and other times things work out in total naiveté, for no other reason than some weird cosmic alignment.

"That said, I don’t really subscribe to the idea of ‘dumb luck’. Instead, perhaps being ‘lucky’ is the ability to make the best of circumstances as they present themselves; maybe luck is no more than finding a silver lining.”

Moonlight Hotel is out 4 April 2025.

ARTIST BIO

Tom Lark is the musical project of Shannon Fowler, who also releases music as Shannon Matthew Vanya. Where SMV allows for pop indulgence, Tom Lark is an outlet for the artist’s indie sensibilities. Returning from a 7-year hiatus in 2023, with his debut full-length record Brave Star, Fowler returned to his first love – which turns out to be making sunburnt psychedelic folk fit for sensitive cowboys to meander and philosophise to.

Brave Star was a finalist for both the 2024 Taite Music Prize and Te Kaipuoro Taketake Toa | Best Folk Artist at the 2024 Aotearoa Music Awards – also winning the artist an APRA Silver Scroll Award Top 20 nomination in 2023 for 'Live Wires'. The record followed two eponymous Tom Lark EPs, which were released in 2011 and 2015 respectively. Those early tunes found a home locally on the Student Radio Network, and abroad on Australian radio station Triple J – where 'Something To Tell You' reached #1 Most Played.

Moonlight Hotel sees Tom Lark return with another watertight collection of folk pop hits with a country bent, through which the artist explores the parallels between his family's historical displacement following the 1929 earthquake that destroyed Murchison – a pioneer town in the upper West Coast of the South Island – and his own following the 2011 earthquakes that levelled much of Ōtautahi.

Fowler was born in Ōtautahi and relocated to Tāmaki Makaurau in 2012, after a stint recording in Berlin. He works from his Okie Dokie Studio, situated just off Karangahape Road. There he has produced, co-written and engineered tracks with a delightful collection of collaborators, including Fazerdaze, Georgia Lines, The Fuzzy Robes, Merk, Randa, A.C. Freazy, Belladonna, and the mysterious Rick Shrimp.

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