Liquid Make-up
"I Wanted to See You to See if I Wanted You" is a pleasant and poignant piece of cod C&W, shot through with an aching pang of airy guitar that gets you right there. A greenish grey English area of music that's been flooded out by grunge.
--Melody Maker March 13, 1993

Uptown Invisible from Melody Maker
Oh, how we will laugh at Hut Recordings and their decision to drop Moose when the new Moose album comes out next month. This sweet, floating (you can swap these adjectives with delicate and poignant, if you want) taster for Honey Bee sounds like the soundtrack for a remake of classic '60's flick Midnight Cowboy, only this time the Jon Voight innocent-lost-in-a-big-strange-city character will be played by Russell and will be seen wandering around the pubs and clubs of North London, lager and groovy country 45s his only friends.
    In other words, it's a huge artistic success for Moose. It probably won't, however, guarantee their lifelong financial security.
    Of course, Russell's reluctance to parade his phobias in front of the adoring horde is a fascinating phobia in itself. That's show biz. And so was the mighty strobe out finale which built, tension upon tension, into the most intense climax these senses have succumbed to in living memory. Seldom can a crowd have been so happy to be shorn of their faculties. On the way out we couldn't' see, couldn't hear, could hardly think. And we were smiling. Moose are great, and accident you can embrace.
---STEVE SUTHERLAND

Uptown Invisible (and Honey Bee) from the Big Takeover
After two special singles in a row, Little Bird (Are You Happy in Your Cage?) before they got tossed from Hut Records, and the wonderful I Wanted to See You to See if I Wanted You/Liquid Make-Up EP on their own Cool Badge label, their Play It Again Sam debut Uptown isn't anywhere near as hooky or prized, yet it's no bomb either. Most importantly, it retains the Moose mix of pretty guitars, Russell Yates's lovely singing, and scrumptious textures originally mapped out on their first and only LP XYZ ...
    Since Uptown is likely on the new LP, it's two out of the three B-sides that warrant purchase ... both Nevergreenand Tower of Crumbs are as beautiful and involved as the A-side, with the latter being a great, shimmering song, period!
---JACK RABID, the Big Takeover

Bang Bang from Melody Maker, March 26, 1994
Moose are a conundrum, don't you find? Live, they hunch over big black guitars and tip out blank and unappealing white noise, but then they make the sweetest and darndest records. The lead track here, "I Wanted to See You to See if I Wanted You", is a camp country-inclined thing which seems to be linked by umbilical c(h)ord to kitsch Seventies classic, "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" by Dawn. And then they start singing in Spanish! A curious business all round, quite frankly.

Honey Bee from New Musical Express
A sense of dread precedes the arrival of a new Moose album. Dread because music this delicate, tuneful, and darned lovely has no place in a modern marketplace dominated by rage and machines, a fact borne out by the group's total lack of commercial success in this country.
    Here's a group who's debut album was the first and probably last indie country collection - a cross between Glen Campbell and AR Kane - and whose second, Honey Bee, takes the same frail thread and pulls it through a cinematic rinse of strings, doomed romance and strange acoustic guitar sounds. A career of influential underground failure a la Felt looms unhappily large.
    The group's twin peaks, Russell Yates and Moose (aka KJ McKillop), both deserve much better. Moose, in particular, has emerged as a songwriter of immense, lopsided skill, up there with similarly fuzzy romantics of yore Edwyn Collins and Roddy Frame. Yates' songwriting career has progressed a little slower (he co-writes four of the 11 songs) but his downcast, detached singing has become a vital ingredient in the overall picture, rather than something tacked on top that you'd hopefully not notice that much. This is a team forging a truly unique brand of their own.
    It's a sepia-tinted sound where funeral-paced piano and strings build up to a heart-breaking crescendo on Joe Courtesy, where you're driving down leafy autumn paths with Bobby Gentry and Rolo McGinty on Mondo Cane, where you've taught The Rockingbirds how to play beautiful country music AND write thrilling pop songs on I Wanted to See You to See if I Wanted You, where the whole record sounds as if it's produced by Francois Truffaut and not an engineer called Lincoln Fong.
    "Come around", in short, "to this strange, sad sound", as Russell advises on Mondo Cane. It's a great record and you should own it.
---TED KESSLER, NME

Honey Bee from Q
Having formed at London-based emporium Record & Tape Exchange, it's no wonder Moose are a smorgasbord of influences. Starting life as drowsy noise-pop, a major about-face just before their debut, XYZ, led to a charmingly crafted amalgam of American country/folk ballads, with indie attitude intact, as if Greenwich Village, Baja, California and Camden Town were neighbouring regions. On a noticeably smaller budget than its predecessor, Honey Bee reaches for more rarefied highs, soul-mining the maverick talents of Lee Hazelwood and Fred Neil. Moose himself is no crooner, which might explain why his band avoid the emotional terrain descended from the open-hearted ruminations of '60s singer-songwriters, to settle for a soothing, at times whimsical, bonhomie which sets them free of their sources. Flute, violin and harmonica wander, while, when the mood takes, as on Joe Courtesy, flamenco guitars nudge into Morricone country. Opposingly, Uptown Invisible and I Wanted To See You To See If I Wanted You are cooly delivered country-pop songs. Gorgeous, really, and worthy of widespread attention.
--Martin Aston

Bang Bang from the big Takeover
Moose's seventh EP is yet another lovingly rich product from this (sadly import only) London moody-pop quintet. Coming on the heels of their stellar second LP Honey Bee - even more dense, windswept, romantic, and tuneful than their debut XYZ, and perhaps more upbeat and less resigned as well - this EP is equally satisfying. It features a creative remix of Honey Bee's standout track I Wanted to See You to See if I Wanted You, the second a-side appearance for this song, having also been the lead track on the self released Liquid Make-Up EP in 1992...
---JACK RABID, the Big Takeover

Thanks to T.T. for copies of these reviews, and to Jack Rabid/the Big Takeover for permission to reprint.