Brightblack Morning Light - Brightblack Morning Light

Genre rock Publisher Matador Records External Links Official Brightblack Morning Light Website Official Matador Records Website

Despite how much I've loved recent albums by Akron/Family, Devendra Banhart, and Animal Collective; I've always been slightly suspicious about this whole freak/nu-folk thing that's been going on. Sure, there were some really gorgeous moments on each of these band's albums, but others where I was pretty convinced that these were some bottom-of-the-barrel Grateful Dead jam session outtakes. Being a respectful, if not quite rabid, fan of the Dead and their influence on psychedelic music over the last forty years - I didn't think this was necessarily bad, but I didn't get why it was being touted as the next big thing. Broken down to the basics, how different was some of this stuff from the mid to late-90's jam band scene that hipsters were tripping over each other in their haste to distance themselves from? Why was this stuff suddenly OK to like? They may get name-checked in Spin and have dalliances with troubled Hollywood divas, but this new wave of folkies are nothing more than warmed-over hippies emitting waves of acoustic bliss that alternate between gorgeously transcendent and tremendously boring.

I became fairly soured on this trend's hype when I started to read the press surrounding Brightblack Morning Light and their self-titled Matador Records debut. Not only did the pair behind this band, Nathan Shineywater (that name!) and Rachel Hughes, pal around with Devendra and his posse; but they were also rumored to live year-round in tents pitched in Northern California. And get a load of these song titles - "Star Blanket River Child," "Amber Canyon Magik," "We Share Our Blanket With the Owl" - what the hell? Full blown hippies may have been the next logical step in the freak-folk evolution, but all of this was sounding either way too forced or far too precious for its own good. All I could picture was chanted lyrics about space and flowers over droning swirls of sitar and drum circles.

And as it turns out, I wasn't too far off - but far off enough to have my low expectations shattered. There were quite a few instances of chanted lyrics, of which I'll go into later, but the droning swirls of sitar were replaced by Hughes' bottom-heavy Rhodes organ that shimmied and rolled throughout and the drum circles were replaced by blues grooves and shuffles anchored by Shineywater's reverb-laden guitar. Brightblack Morning Light is a low-end, sparse, lethargic trip through the dubbier side of a shoegaze jam session held in the back room of a Mississippi crossroads shack. No, seriously. As much as I am loathe to quote press releases, when Matador's asks "if there's a place on the map where MBV, Lee Perry, and Little Willie John can all happily co-exist," they couldn't have described the sound more perfectly. Nearly every track is built around a barely-there rhythm and washes of organ and other effects that are much like traditional dub in that everything is more notable for what isn't there than what is. The cumulative effect is like a bunch of hippies ready to jam all out, but being far too stoned to commit fully to the effort.

Floating over this altogether unstable foundation are the ethereal vocals, most often laid down by Hughes in a seeming effort to add another layer to the music rather than trying to convey any sort of narrative. The lyrics, on the rare occasion when they can be clearly deciphered, rarely end up being more than the song title repeated or semi-related, loose associations. But these vocals end up as little more than window dressing, as the music below is where one's full attention usually will, or should, lie. Whether through the juke-joint jazz inspired "Friend of Time" or the ambient krautrock of the aforementioned "Owl," Brightblack's music is all about holding onto the barest of rhythms and using them as a springboard for exploration. Elements of other types of music pop up throughout the disc, such as the jazz trumpet of the previously mentioned "Friend of Time" or the wah-wah funk guitar on the altogether druggy "Star Blanket River Child."

This album is, without a doubt, meant to be enjoyed on a good pair of headphones that truly capture all of the subtleties and space that make it such a worthwhile trip. Reducing it to mere background music will probably result in a disappointing listen with all the tracks melting together into one indiscernible mess, even upon close inspection many of these tracks sound very similar to one another - one of my minor quibbles with the disc. Some of the tracks do tend to overstay their welcome and drag on without many revelations, but I suppose that's par for the course when dealing with this sort of nearly improvised music. It's fairly easy to see why this album might not click for everyone, but anyone with an inclination towards trippy, exploratory music will do well to check it out before dismissing the band as freak-folk also-rans.