Moneyball is a lovingly assembled and moving album, with audible care in every decision from the very first pluck. There’s a sense that Dutch Interior didn’t just write and record these songs, but built them, with reverence, love, and a quiet kind of mastery. It would be easy for an alt-country/folk-rock album like this to slide into saccharine cliché but Moneyball is anything but dull, because there’s such reverence for the music they’re referencing, be it Fleetwood Mac, The Allman Brothers, or early solo Clapton. Sweet Time, in particular, is a highlight, radiating vintage warmth and precision, the guitar work showing a band fluent in the language of another era. The range of instruments used across the record is striking, from pedal steel to piano, acoustic textures to ambient swells. Vocally, the performances are restrained in the best possible way, with no affectation, no over-singing, and no strain to impress, with character and quiet confidence.

One of the great triumphs of Moneyball is the way it sidesteps one of alt-country and indie folk’s most persistent traps, having become bloated with the self-regard of solo artists presenting themselves as world-weary oracles with a guitar and a head full of thoughts we must hear. Moneyball, by contrast, is unmistakably the sound of a group of friends listening to one another. You can hear how much they enjoy playing together. Space is shared, textures build communally, and the more ambitious or expressive moments never feel like a single member pushing to the front. This is music being made because it’s a joy to make it, and this is a record with not just tonal beauty but warm and earthy emotional sincerity.