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Brightblack Morning Light "All We Have Broken Shines"

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

In the upset of the half-decade, the second wave of indie rock (which I’ll dub the “Internet” era because I’m so bright) has resulted in a preponderance of throwback-style psychedelic bands. To further complicate matters, this isn’t the second wave of psych (the arty kind of Echo and the Bunnymen, The Church, Robyn Hitchcock), or the third (post-Grateful Dead jammys) or the little bitty precious ripple of Elephant 6, but a comparatively massive and stylistically disparate contingent united by their existence in the age of the Internet (stop laughing) and their direct lines of stylistic influence (sure, Echo and The Church were doing the Jim Morrison thing and Hitchcock was more or less Syd Barrett, but they were still undeniably new, right?). Now, take a hop around the Web and it’s like going to the psych-rock Sam’s Club: Dead Meadow and Comets on Fire are the stoner-psych face-melters, Vetiver’s a more mature, spacier American Beauty and Devendra Banhart is the dippy Donovan representative. Then there’s the foggy, calm Disraeli Gears-ishness of the wonderful Black Mountain, the folk/prog elegance of Espers and Early Day Miners, and even the Nuggets psych-pop (glam, even) of the M’s. It’s all specific and deliberate throwback stuff, and it’s macro because it was ushered into existence (probably only in my head) by the Internet. And keep in mind that these are just the ones that have gotten picked up by labels, filling vanity spots and niche corners of rosters. Not to get all Zen and whatever, but this stuff’s always been out there, now we just know about it. We have the information because we’re in the information age holy cow.

On to Brightblack Morning Light. At first blush they seemed like a huge gimmick, relying solely on soupy, dreamlike soundscapes and druggy moods, sounding like underscore music for that slo-mo drug scene in that one teen flick. The organ/bass melodies on “All We Have Broken Shines” (mp3) swayed like tall, skinny trees and the flutes floated toward me and coated my face like a sticky blunt haze, but it all seemed contrived and artificial, as if relying for inspiration on some archetypical hippie scene (instead of a musical style) that only exists in forty-year-old memories. But after several more listens, that’s what endeared them to me. They’re tree-hugging, dreamcatcher-owning, owl-loving (?), sex-in-the-field flakes, and I have no idea if they’re draping themselves in these things from an ironic distance (fun) or if they’re truly down with the whole thing, which I suspect. Status specifically called them “Über-mellow hippie shoegazer slowcore,” and perhaps it’s best to use indie-rock qualifiers instead of old hippie ones. It’s mood music, you see, just like large chunks of Yo La Tengo’s and Cat Power’s catalog. Oh snap, I think Matador might be on to something here.

Brightblack Morning Light is available from Ol’ Red Cape. BML’s website.

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