Being proud of your peers/friends in the scene and showing your support for what they’re doing is extremely important in building a community. It shows strength and really brings a level of excitement to everything going around what those artists are bringing to the table. Sometimes however, you find out that those artists/friends of yours are doing something you’d be supporting regardless of affiliation. That they are actually tapping into something inside of you that most musicians globally have a hard time of achieving with anyone, much less their fans.
This is entirely the case with the first of hopefully many full-length efforts offered by Bright Channel; a band who has stepped up what to expect from the genre many have so recently grasped onto so firmly…that genre being, of course, Shoegazer.
Not only has this release shown a drive and passion not often felt by most artists out there, but it has also in the same right landed itself into a category best described as “legendary.” Not since the days of Loveless and Mezcal Head have I personally heard such a solid, gigantic landscape of power and beauty such as found on this self-titled wonder. And not to put those other genre-breaking greats to shame, I must also bring up the point that this album is one of the first and only in this spectrum of music to have nearly back-to-back phenomenal tracks flowing ever so elegantly from one to another. From the blazingly potent groove of “Final Stretch,” to the wall of emotion drenching the listener in “Motion Building,” to the driving thruster of energy flowing from every seam of “Witness,” (a personal favorite) they all work…almost too well. It’s something we all must step back and take notice of, regardless of whether we enjoy the sob filled sound created by this style or not. It’s rare to find bands anywhere who can pull this sort of feat off, and it’s coming from our own backyard!
I do still see room to grow even with the amount of praise I’ve thrown down. Some of my favorites from the early BC demo days did lose their luster in the translation. One in particular, “Night Eyes,” completely dropped far from sight. The wall of sound pummeling from the previous effort’s guitar lines lost their shine and fell deep into what I could only describe as a well of pillows. It’s almost as if the huge cavern crashed in on the band before they had a chance to get out their original emotions. This is completely understandable as recreating art is a tough thing to do, and I commend them on their efforts.
But besides those small “techie” issues, this is an album which has the same desirability or even more so than any shoegazer band to date. If I had to make one recommended musical purchase for the month of October, this would be it.
www.flightapproved.com
