Brightblack Morning Light Reviewed
Brightblack Morning Light
Brightblack Morning Light
(Matador)
By now the words “Devendra Banhart” are enough to drive people in one of two directions. But what if you found out there were a pair of friends of Banhart’s from the freak-folk scene who deflected all attention, and were possibly the most listenable of the genre’s sideshows?
Nathan Shineywater and Rachael Hughes began cultivating Brightblack Morning Light around the same time the media flies caught wind of Banhart and Joanna Newsom but have kept a remarkably low profile since. Holding steadily to a hippie aesthetic bordering on self-exile, their music is based well within the ether, as much as its creators might protest. While shorthand might describe Brightback’s self-titled debut as twilight Beta Band, in the flesh it’s a drawn-out, psychedelic voyage conjured in a place where there certainly weren’t any clocks. But where many bands could be accused of indulgence (the 10-and-a-half minutes of “Star Blanket River Child” for starters), Shineywater and Hughes casually pass time with elastic slide guitar runs and warm Rhodes piano. Wiping the reverb from his eyes only drenches Shineywater’s words on “All We Have Broken Shines,” and the breathy “Come Another Rain Down” lies in a hammock comfortably supported by telephone poles. If you fall asleep, don’t worry: Brightblack will be playing still when you awake, likely to lull you back to sleep again.
— Kevin Keegan
Click here to download “Everybody Daylight.”
