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Lights - Rites
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| Tinymixtapes |
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As far 1970s influences go, Fleetwood Mac have always been a bit shortchanged. Perhaps it was their frequent flirtations with the mainstream or their purist approach that led to their stature as lesser inspiration points, but the last three decades have seen Iggy, Can, Zeppelin, and Bowie being heralded, mimicked, and borrowed from endlessly; the best that the Mac’s legacy has garnered in the mainstream is a Dixie Chicks cover of “Landslide.” Therefore, it’s quite welcome to encounter an album like Rites, the second offering from the Brooklyn-based band Lights, which neatly gives ode to Mac’s aesthetic. More fully realized than their 2008 self-titled debut in both its musical dynamics and thematic scope, Rites plays to the same loose, vocal-based, genre-defiant modes that made Fleetwood Mac, and particularly their landmark double-player Tusk, so memorable. There are spritely harmonies embedded in hard rock grooves and wisps of English folk, with even a cover of Tusk’s Bunkingham-penned ballad, “Save Me a Place.” But Lights expand their sound into other areas too, as the album contains some serious boogie elements as well as intermittent doses of acid-rock guitars. Traces of Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Nick Drake, and even Luscious Jackson merge to create a palate of nine dense, pleasantly dance-oriented tracks. But Rites is also a bit under-realized. “Heavy Drops” would be in contention for Single of the Year if the mix didn’t drown out the lush layer of woodwinds and keys with throbbing guitars. The sax solo on “Can You Here Me?” is nicely played, but far too rushed to add tension to an otherwise well-crafted song. “Fire Night,” a funky, groove-laden track, replete with mystical-romantic imagery and French-Gainsbourg-esque interludes, is obscenely interrupted by blazing guitars, grossly overstating the melodic chorus: “Dance until the early dawn/ Dance until the ember’s gone.”...full text |
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| Dustedmagazine |
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Since their delicately psychotropic debut last year, the Brooklyn art-folk band known as Lights (emphatically not the Toronto singer of the same name) has picked up bassist Andy MacLoed as a permanent participant and, not coincidentally, made a better, louder and more enjoyable second album. The self-titled had a gauzy, soft-focus to it, as drummer Linnea Vedder and guitarist Sophia Knapp traded the most ethereal of vocal lines. (A fourth member, Wizard Smoke, does the band’s light shows, but doesn’t sing or play.) The singing had a folk gentle-ness, but the music was full-bore 1960s psychedelia. Knapp, in particular, seemed to work with a floor full of pedals, echoey delay shimmering around “Break, Run, Fly,” fuzzy distortion enveloping “For You” and “Lick the Blood,” a maelstrom of static obscuring “Sing It O O O.” The music evoked arcane rituals, head trips, mystery…but dance parties? Not so much. Fast forward to Rites. There’s a rougher, more celebratory sound. A little bit of soul has crept into the psychedelia, a funk backstop to the slow rhythms. On “Can You Hear Me,” Vedder and Knapp still lock in close-range harmonies, but now sound more Motown than misty isles. And “Hold On,” with its hard-four guitar strum and spoke-sung verses, has the assertiveness of rock, even punk, behind its lush vocals and piano runs. There’s more aggression, more forward movement, less nebulous vibe and more straight-line progression. The band that used to sound like the Roches singing in front of Pink Floyd now isn’t afraid to socialize....full text |
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| Pitchfork |
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Rites is just about as good a stoner rock album as I've heard in as long as I can remember. It's also one of the better radio-ready pop records of the last several months, and occasionally a more than adequate (if swivel-troublingly ethereal) dancefloor filler. That's some gap between Acid King and Kelly Clarkson, you know, a challenge the shapeshifting Brooklyn collective Lights meet at nearly every turn; pure, pretty pop rubs elbows with fistpump fodder in the same song, occasionally intermingling but never interfering. That kind of swift and changeable movement between genre means just about every sound they touch on, they can handle. And it's some list. Take if you will "Heavy Drops", a sprawling, Dean Wareham-jamming-with-Pink-Floyd slow-burner with a supple, slightly sour, country-tinged melody. Or "Can You Hear Me?", equal parts Bobby Womack, the Spice Girls, "Stillness Is the Move", Rumours, and "Baker Street". Shades of the Everly Brothers and Lucinda Williams' better ballads color the multipart "Love"; well, the parts that aren't in waltz time, anyhow. "Hold On" imagines PJ Harvey as Neil Young, while "Fire Night" takes DFA style disco funk to Paris for the evening. I could go on, but unlike music writing that delights in reference dropping for its own sake, Rites' fluidity of motion keeps things from getting awkward and self-congratulatory. That "Fire Night" crackles out just seconds before "We Belong" trickles in seems the most natural thing in the world....full text |
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