08/22/2024
Important news for folks who went to Total Fest here!
For us here The Lights are one of those all-time best groups, like Drunk Horse, Volumen and the Champs for us. No bum shows, always a band we looked forward to seeing no matter what. Their first album is a total classic, but was only released on CD, as was kind of often the practice 21 years ago. It's called Beautiful Bird and captures the first set of Lights songs we ever heard. From absolute instantly familiar pop gem of Victims of the Pleasure of the Sense of Hearing to Train and Trapped Like a Trap Inside a Trap, this album has hit after hit. True to themselves and their art, the Lights never gave thought to "making it" in a traditional band-as-career sense, but rather viewed performances competitively, always keeping up an entirely aggressive practice regimen, and prided themselves on being a seriously tight band, in touch with each others styles and preferences, and from an audience standpoint, that made them an absolute joy to watch. While not genre-similar, I always got those same kind of chills I got seeing a band like Dead Moon, where there wasn't any pretense, but the three of them onstage together was such a special, joyous thing you just had to be glued to it. Same with the Lights for me.
Anyhow, sure, they played shows all over, mostly in Seattle, but in San Francisco, L.A. and Missoula, toured to NME and SXSW, toured with Oneida and Rick Froberg's post-Hot Snakes band Obits. And they did get some really heartfelt and nice props from local indie media and radio, but their goal was to be a good band that wrote great music. At least that's how we think about their beautifully pure trajectory as a group.
So, this brings us a whole lot of joy to share that we're working with our pals at the Swingline and the band to get this fabulous first record out on vinyl, and we just got the test pressings! We'll be sharing pre-order info really soon, but wanted to make sure you saw this. Because, you know, you have a lot of records, and probably some really good ones, but you don't have this one yet.
