City Light - Burned Out Bright

Genre electronica Publisher BANTER External Links

I’m riding through the desert on a tune with no name
its seems the whole thing sounds the same

What happens when a low level singer/songwriter hooks up with two producers of disparate forms of music? If Burned Out Bright, the debut album from City Light, is any indication, the answer is a resounding and unequivocal yawn.

The process I take to record my opinions regarding any sort of medium, be it film, music or literature, is a fairly straight forward one. First off, I will have to convince myself that my opinion is worth hearing. No small feat, I assure you. Then I will start the album/movie/book, open up a Word document and record my thoughts regarding it as they occur to me. When all is said and done and nice and concluded, those responsible for the piece will have taken up some of my time and I will have a lengthy diatribe describing whether or not it was time well spent. With this album, something has happened that has never happened before. Up until about three minutes ago I was staring at a blank screen. What’s important to keep in mind is that the last note of Burned Out Bright passed between my ears some 30 minutes ago. That’s an hour. An hour in which I could conjure up no feelings, strong or otherwise, to attribute to the time I had spent listening to what I assume was meant to be something meaningful to somebody. In the time that passed, I felt nothing more whilst listening to it than a profound sense of having been occupied. I wasn’t doing anything special. Just killing time. It didn’t even leave a bad impression on me. It left no impression, and, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m pretty sure that’s slightly worse. For all of the seemingly earnest effort by the various contributors to the project known as City Light, by the time the final line rolled past I was left strangely unaffected. There was a certain artificial quality to the proceedings that rendered the whole experience oddly cold.

The story of City Light is at least fairly interesting. Fairly interesting, but somewhat familiar. Let’s see if you recognize this story. Some guy knows another guy, wants to work with him, has problem of distance to contend with. Sends demos to guy through mail, guy likes them, shares them with guy he knows. That guy adds final touches. Magic is made. So one would think, or at the very least, hope. Now you could be forgiven for thinking that this narrative sounds very similar to the story that is posted for the origins of The Postal Service, the side project of Death Cab For Cutie front man Ben Gibbard. It does. Because it is almost the same one. Gibbard had a friend with whom he wanted to collaborate, but who lived across the country. Friend sent him beats through postal service (GET IT?), he sings over them, sends them back, actual magic is made.

The difference between the two projects is that Gibbard is not only a talented vocalist but a rather impressive lyricist as well. He very effectively inserts scathing and honest insight behind beautiful metaphors and clever rhyme schemes. Not only that, his lower octave voice gives a certain gravity to not only the digital soundscape he was wandering through on The Postal Service project, but just about anything he lends his voice to. On the other hand, Matt Shaw, the man on the mic for City Light, has a vocal style that sounds like a mix between an anesthetized Conor Oberst and someone just simply bored with the whole ordeal. As if he has something better to do. Taking cover behind a wall of far too fuzzy synths and almost bludgeoning repetitious drum machine beats, he spends the entire album confusing insight with basic observation skills, straining the limits of poetic license in the process. He makes the obviously amateur mistake of implying that he knows something that we don’t, and as a result, comes off as a bit disingenuous. Like the musings of someone barely past pubescence, the lyrics smack of someone who wants everyone to think he’s lived a life worth sharing, but hasn’t really done anything of the sort.

The music that makes up the backing track to this verbal banality is only slightly more engaging. There are a number of different styles at play here and I appreciate the effort put in to try to emulate many different genres. There are elements of Electro, Hip-hip, Drum and Bass, Jungle and even that strange “Emo-hop” thing that’s been all the rage these days. Thanks for bringing the team. The issue is that each cut comes across as nothing more than a small reference point of each style it is aping, and as such, it smacks of a shameless attempt to reach as wide a fan base as possible. The whole of the CD is built on low rent versions of beats other musicians are doing. Not only doing, but doing better. So you may sound like a low rent Boards of Canada. Maybe a low rent Beck. You are still playing the game in the minor leagues and not doing a very good job at it.

I’m sure I would have loved this album about fifteen years ago.  I am at a point in my life where pointing out the myriad foibles of the human condition is no longer enough. It is now and now I demand a bit more effort on the part of my balladeers. As a result, it is my most humble of opinions that these lights, this City Light, need not burn bright in perpetuity. I believe that they should be extinguished long before they have the chance to bathe the world in their mediocre glow.