There’s an Elizabeth Bishop poem, “Love Lies Sleeping,” that ends with the lines “for always to one, or several, morning comes / whose head has fallen over the edge of his bed, / whose face is turned / so that the image of // the city grows down into his open eyes / inverted and distorted. / No. I mean / distorted and revealed.” This is how I’ve always understood how Alexei Casselle writes as Crescent Moon. Whether the setting for a song is urban or pastoral, in the depths of bloodless winter or the predawn swoon of summer, Casselle concerns himself above all with the landscape and how we make our way through it. His writing as a storyteller feels a bit dreamlike, slightly askew, grounded in concrete details only made stranger by how finely etched they are. It’s a familiar world, but also distorted, and revealed. Casselle has been making music with groups including Kill the Vultures and Roma di Luna for over 10 years.

The backdrop for Casselle’s words is provided by Big Trouble, a four-piece composed of Twin Cities music veterans Steve McPherson (guitar), Josh Peterson (guitar), Sean McPherson (bass) and Peter Leggett (drums). Conceived of as a dual-purpose group that could play both original instrumental music in small venues and provide support to vocalists on their original material, Big Trouble has collaborated — in addition to Crescent Moon — with artists including Chris Koza, Ben Weaver, Lucy Michelle, P.O.S. and Aby Wolf. They’ve performed at the Doomtree Blowout, at the release party for R.T. Rybak’s Pothole Confidential, and on Valentine’s Day at the Cedar Cultural Center. Their music is open-ended and often improvisational, but also carefully crafted and conversational. It can be by turns atmospheric, direct, textural and ambient.

In 2009, Crescent Moon + Big Trouble released their first recording — a self-titled, six-song EP — on Afternoon Records. The single, “Hunting Season,” received airplay on the Current, Radio K and other radio stations. Since then, commitments both musical and ordinary have kept the group from getting together very often outside of the occasional show. This past fall, though, Crescent Moon + Big Trouble headed to Bellows Studio in Saint Paul to finally record some of their “new” songs. The result is High Hopes, a micro-release in three acts.