Lights - Lights

Siren voices from a New York loft apartment

Lights are Brooklyn artists Sophia Knapp and Linnea Vedder, who’ve laid down brush and easel in order to make haunted and haunting post-punk tribal folk-rock together. Siginificantly produced by Chris Coady (also desk man for TV On The Radio and Gang Gang Dance) this fits into a pattern of mystical, tribal-sounding new hippydom along with the aforementioned Gang Gang Dance, Yeasayer and Celebration, yet forges a unique and individual sound. Lights combines an obvious grounding in the darker side of post-punk with something much more delicate and introverted, almost homespun, and a murky mysticality. It’s almost a new wave of new age (and no, that is not a serious suggestion for a genre). Knapp and Vedder harmonise beautifully, like the Coen Brothers’ folksy sirens, or an underworld counterpart to The Be Good Tanyas. Spacey guitars and listlessy shaken tambourines underpin washed out, spooky ballad laments such as Branches Low, while For You and Lick The Blood have elements of Black Mountain’s rockier, Sabbathy witch-rock, or the darkly sexy fairytale world of the Throwing Muses. Hoodoo? You do.

Twisted Nerve | TN 082 CD

Reviewed by Emily Mackay
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