Great Northern's sophomore album paints the same atmospheric, panoramic vista as 2007's
Trading Twilight for Daylight, but it does so with a wider brush, replacing the quieter moments of the previous album with soaring guitars and wide-eyed, arena-bound anthems. There are some slower songs here, most notably "Stop" -- the same sort of nuanced indie dirge that
Margot & the Nuclear So and So's execute so well -- and "New Tricks," where electronic drums boom beneath piles of gothic harmonies and haunted-house ambience. Such songs are merely palette cleansers for the album's meatier numbers, though, which pit Rachel Stolte's alto vocals against Solon Bixler's sonic swells.
Great Northern toured heavily in support of
Trading Twilight for Daylight, logging upwards of a year and a half on the road, and
Remind Me Where the Light Is is appropriately tailored to that live experience. Fuzz-laden guitars aim for the cheap seats, dreamy in their tone but grounded nonetheless, while Stotle turns in some of her strongest performances to date with "Fingers" and "Mountains," both of which build up to cathartic, cloud-parting choruses. The bandmates pull extra weight by writing the bulk of the string arrangements, the best of which lend an ethereal, orchestral gauze to the track list.
Remind Me Where the Light Is ultimately concludes as the luminous successor to
Trading Twilight for Daylight -- bright where that album was nocturnal, open-armed where
Twilight was introspective, and altogether illustrative of
Great Northern's growth as songwriters and performers. ~ Andrew Leahey