Buzzin Music

Chicago-based quartet Light Pollution release their debut album Apparitions on 26 July, on Carpark.

Light Pollution - Apparitions

As halogen beams and fluorescent streams bleach the crystal tranquillity of the night sky, tricks of the artificial light muddy the mind’s eye and apparitions make flights of fancy. Translate this to a sonic landscape and rarely has a band’s name and the title of their debut long play been so revealing.

Light Pollution’s musical peers include The Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear and Arcade Fire; a triumvirate whose names do little to make a synaptic connection with the, at times, dazzling aural delights they deliver.

However, Light Pollution have pointed their signposts to the heart of the matter; a blurred, hazy debut that reverberates with ghostly intent.

Album opener Good Feelings shimmers into view from a synth-washed shore, with arpeggiated undercurrents darting from channel to channel; the animals collect at a safe distance and dare the clones to emerge from the breakers.

But Light Pollution are more than just a cut-and-paste pastiche of the previously mentioned triumvirate. The driving bass and drum line that brings Good Feelings to life has the oily-staged urgency of British Sea Power’s Open Season and as James Michael Cicero’s wavering, high-cut vocals slowdive into range it brings memories of Neil Halstead and his shoe-gazing cohorts flooding back.

At its best, Apparitions showcases the bands obvious love of reverbed soundscapes and heart-melting vocal arrangements in the mould of Brian Wilson. The spectral hand of Phil Spector strokes the spine on Drunk Kids, with its Ronettes drum opening and cascading walls of sound.

References to other bands that have skirted and flirted with the psych-washed halls of pop are numerous. The ethereal reverb-bounce on Deyci Right On gives way to the celestial organ that orbits the dark side of the moon. And the quasar-pulsed opening of Bad Vibes is mercury-revved.

It doesn’t always work. At times the washed production floods the mind and on tracks such as Witchcraft and Oh Ivory!, if it didn’t then all that would be left are cracked formulas already covered by Light Pollution’s peers.

Yet, as a whole, Apparitions is a shimmering joy, that gently soaks the soul with each listen until it dissolves into glistening puddles that reflect the glowering slide-effects of the polluted night sky.   

For details of live dates visit Light Pollution’s myspace site.

Watch the promo video for Light Pollution’s Good Feelings.