Lights - Rites (Drag City) Eric Nielsen 6.27.9 release date 7.21.9
This Lights album Rites kicks ass in a genre that doesn't kick too often. The first song on the album, Heavy Drops, sets up with gently saturated guitars with Richard Thompson keys driving Thelma and Louise up to and off the cliff, where suddenly you're floating, flying, with female soothings by Sophia Knapp and Linnea Vedder, slowly floating down to the river rocks shimmering. You veer up off the bottom with the rich "Heavy Drops Fall Down" chorus backed with some psychedelic wah wah guitar, punctuated by some great Jerry Garcia runs pushing the out with heavy Indian Jewelry tones. Suffice it to say the guitar playing on the entire album is delightful without being dickish or smarmy pop.

The pics by Ben Rowland are hilarious, ABBA looking, three girls one guy, white outfits, white backgrounds, shimmering, Brooklyn white. I'm so glad it made it on my player because the genre indicated by the artwork isn't usually included in my bag of tricks.

The soprano female voices sound a little Juliana Hatfield, but more angelic, more harmonies, softer, almost ambient, lyrics like wind and water love and, well, Lights. They feel love all around them. So it's got that Brooklyn hippie/ABBA pop that pushes envelopes with some great transitions and levels in the songs. Really simple and successful plateaus of sound come up on you, disappear from beneath you and stack up, out and over the pyramids (now I'm a hippie). It's got guitars from the hip 90's some of the 80's big Tower of Power and then a real modern sound sometimes in the same song.

Let the guitars, structures, themes, girl's voices, and tones lift you up to your ceremony of Rites. Let's just say it's my guilty pleasure, as most prominently noted in the bass playing of Andy Macleod on Fire Night. Also sounds a little like Air, The Beatles and The Sundays.