After releasing a debut album that delved into light electronics, avant-garde noise, and sad, sad ballads,
Lightning in a Twilight Hour's second album,
Overwintering, changes things up considerably. The melancholy pop collective (operated by Bobby Wratten, formerly of
Field Mice/
Trembling Blue Stars, and made up of former bandmates and colleagues of his, bassist
Michael Hiscock, vocalists
Beth Arzy and Anne Mari Davies, and producer
Ian Catt) delves into British folk and American slowcore to add more devastatingly bleak textures to their already almost unbearably blue sound. From the former, they add in gentle woodwinds, strummed acoustic guitars, and for the first time, beautiful vocal harmonies featuring all three singers. The influence of the latter is embodied by the elongated lengths of the songs, the space between notes, and the general gloom that calls to mind a gentler, more fragile
American Football at times. They haven't done away with the electronic textures that made their initial recordings a slight departure from previous projects; instead, those elements are folded in more organically. The unadorned vocals blend with droning electronic sounds, the acoustic guitars slot in just so next to the drum machines, and the empty spaces harmonize with echoing reverb. It's a daring, subtle feat of arrangement that's made invincible by the welled-with-tears vocals that all three singers conjure up with minimal effort, and the austere beauty with which the pieces are assembled. The longer tracks, like "Delphinium" -- which unspools slowly over a marching drum machine, jangling guitar chords, echoing vocals, and a sense of pastoral gloom -- create an unbreakable mood that can be best described as forlorn. So, too, the bitterly spacious "The Cinematographer as Painter." The fuzzy crackle and snap of the rhythm track melds with the precise shimmer of the electric guitar, and the carefully plotted-out vocals transmit a feeling of broken tenderness that's hard to escape. The shorter songs work the same kind of magic, though they vary a little more. "Leaf Fall Is Over" is an almost peppy
Field Mice-style ballad that comes the closest (about a hundred miles) to being a single; the avant-pop gem "Her Own Refrain" mixes shimmering noise, oscillating synth tones, and treated vocals; and "Slow Motion Spirits" is a sweetly sad dub lament with some trademark melodic bass playing from
Hiscock. The first
Lightning in a Twilight Hour releases seemed like a good first step toward something new from Wratten and friends that promised new delights while still hewing closely to the aspects of their sound that were important to hold on to.
Overwintering fulfills all that promise and takes another step, this time a giant one, in a direction anyone who has ever been a fan of a Wratten band needs to follow. Guaranteed heartbreak, guaranteed beauty. ~ Tim Sendra