Moonshine Freeze

According to Kate Stables, the lead singer of the band, the name of the album and the song of the same name were based on a children's game. Stables stated in an interview: "It seemed like some kind of powerful magic spell. That's woven in there, with ideas about change — how we deal with change and how we relate and live with other people in different situations, how we see and experience things differently at different times, how different numbers can dramatically change a group's dynamic".^[2]

In 2018, the band released demo versions of several of the songs, as well as a collection of remixes.^[3]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.5/10[4]
Metacritic	78/100[5]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[6]
Drowned in Sound	9/10[7]
Exclaim!	7/10[8]
The Guardian	[9]
The Irish Times	[10]
Mojo	[11]
The Observer	[12]
Q	[13]
Record Collector	[14]
The Skinny	[15]

Moonshine Freeze was met with widespread acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 78 based on seventeen reviews.^[5] The aggregator AnyDecentMusic? has the critical consensus of the album at a 7.5 out of 10, based on twenty-one reviews.^[4]

Joe Breen of The Irish Times gave the album maximum score, declaring it "a five-star stone-cold instant classic".^[10] Ellen Peirson-Hagger of Drowned in Sound also praised the album, saying "After three previous albums, Moonshine Freeze is finally the sound of a storyteller of a musician finding her niche. And it is a joy to behold".^[7]