Fire On The Bright Sky
Warm Electronic Recordings
Release Date: September 12th 2006.
It's been a year since the resignation of Lily Wolfe closed the books on NYC dream-pop quartet Parker & Lily, and six months since the reconfiguration of the remaining members into an Athens Ga trio named (after Parker & Lily’s third and final album) The Low Lows. The sonic safety net (and soundtrack atmosphere) provided by Lily's bass and keyboards having been eliminated, what remains, in the new band, are sparse, melodic, country Palace-isms on the one hand, & on the other an evocation of the sweepingly noisy, anthemic styles of My Morning Jacket & Galaxie 500.
Singer & guitarist P.L. Noon's voice - formerly a sort of crooning mumble – has evolved radically over the past year into a high wail ("...epically mournful...")* evocative of Neil Young or Jim James. His lyrics tell troubled stories obscurely ("Biting turns of phrase... Noon has shaved his observations into lyrics so concise, they reach haiku-like proportions of succinctness... ")** with an exacting, reductive prose style ("A precise, poetic minimalism that says little and suggests everything, painting a radiant and desperate, slow-rolling panorama of unflinching extremes...")***.
Meanwhile, the fractured and fragmented drumming of Jeremy Wheatley & the distorted farfisa and sad baritone vocal harmonies of Daniel Rickard make The Low Lows' debut album a study in extremes. Stark southern sweetness gives way unexpectedly to great storms of guitar noise, bright walls of country narcosis crumble into climactic, stomping feedback and distortion. Pure melodic love-songs abound, made all the sweeter by virtue of being hemmed in by such a stormy darkness ("…sweltering sorrow... a triumph of concentrated mourning")****. The implicit tension, not to say violence, that underlaid Parker & Lily’s characteristically dense strata of organs and steel guitars has been made overt, stripped down & fashioned into a weapon.
The Low Lows’ live show is a more dishevelled but exhilarating beast, typically faster & much noisier than the albums, and pre-release european tours have already generated glowing response ("Monstrously sad & brilliantly anachronistic... here are three sparkling, slightly surreal rock icons that seem to have been constructed out of feedback and white noise… Like werewolves mutating, feedback drips from freshly exposed fangs... Then suddenly they return to us, playing pretty, remorseful songs about the carnage they caused...")*****.
Having made a pact among themselves to record & release three records in the space of a year, Rickard, Wheatley and Noon are currently in the studio putting the finishing touches to their second full-length, "Tigers", slated for release in January of 2007. The Low Lows will tour the U.S. in September/October (& Europe in November/December) of 2006.
* Fuoribattuta, Italy
** Splendid
*** Boston Phoenix
**** Athens Flagpole
***** El Pais, Barcelona |
