Weekly Release Spotlight: Lightning Dust

Posted on 9/13/2009

Lightning Dust

Infinite Light

[Jagjaguwar]

It's rare to come across a truly unique voice, and even rarer to find one that transcends musical styles. Antony Hegarty has done it with Antony and the Johnsons and Hercules and Love Affair. While Amber Webber's two projects, Black Mountain and Lightning Dust, may not be as vastly different, her voice is still unique, and still transcendent, in both. On Infinite Light, the second release from Webber's project with fellow Black Mountain member Joshua Wells, her voice (not to mention her and Wells's songwriting) doesn't just carry the record, it propels it.

Where Black Mountain is dark and brooding psych-rock, Lightning Dust is, as its name would suggest, lighter. While Webber and Wells have definitely moved in a poppier (at least poppier compared with Black Mountain) direction, the songs still aren't quite happy in any traditional sense. Infinite Light is almost cinematic, spanning the spectrum of human experience from hope to despair and everything in between. And like any good cinematic experience, it includes tragedy. Infinite Light's catchiness and almost-folkiness is interspersed with Webber's lyrics of sorrow, longing and heartbreak. "I declare a war on you, someday soon," she announces in the record's first song, "Antonia Jane," a ballad that contrasts Webber's imagery of being fed to wolves with soft piano. Her trademark quaver adds vulnerability, most notably on "Dreamer" and "Never Seen." And the band's lush orchestration becomes even more theatrical, even bordering on epic, on "History," "Wondering What Everyone Knows" and the six-minute "Take it Home," which could easily be a Black Mountain song.

Lightning Dust isn't just Black Mountain (ahem) light. Wells and Webber have harnessed the intensity of Black Mountain but they've employed it in a more personal, emotive way with Lightning Dust. Infinite Light is a dynamic album that wanders out of the comfort zone of the musicians' other band, yet reminds us what we like so much about them in the first place.

Written by Dana Raidt, Radio K volunteer.