Brightblack Morning Light

Related Content

• On the Record
  December 7, 2006
• Some Velvet Morning
  July 13, 2006
• Nationalistic
  December 28, 2006
• Westword Music Showcase 2007
  June 14, 2007
• And the Winners Are ...
  December 25, 1997

More About

• Brightblack Morning Light
• Nathan Shineywater
• Jason Spaceman

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Brightblack Morning Light bears a rather striking, but not crippling, resemblance to the orchestral psychedelia of Spiritualized. Both bands have an affinity for taking a foggy blues riff and wrapping it in street-smack, slow-mo gospel. Nathan Shineywater even shares Jason Spaceman's ghostly tendency to sing in long, crawling exhales that sound like someone probably had to set the microphone down on the floor next to his sprawled-out body. The group also brings plenty of its own angles to the bliss-outs, including dub bass lines and horns that would be comfy in a Mad Professor lullaby. A few tracks, such as "All We Have Broken Shines" and "Amber Canyon Magik," even inject the slightest canyon country twang, though loosely, in drugged drawls and cloudy, mile-stretched bits of steel pedal. You don't need to spike a vein to tap into this CD; it's just that out-of-your head metaphors work well in describing what a beautifully blown-out sound the group makes.