One of the more sober, yet thrillingly emotional songs of 2009 might be “Antonia Jane,” the opening track on Lightning Dust’s forthcoming album, Infinite Light. It’s filled with sharp, lovely harbingers, truths extolled from Amber Webber, who is one half of the duo that creates these power-pop songs with delightful, classic frills. Webber teams with Joshua Wells (both of Black Mountain, the outfit that brought In The Future, one of the more underrated records of 2008) for an offshoot album of ten tracks detailing love lost, found, and the sprawl toward internal rediscovery.
If “Antonia Jane” is best categorized as sober (the songs suffer for simple labeling), then the following track, “I Knew,” is comfortably more up-tempo, filled from tip to tail with lovely and vulnerable caterwauling that carries just a hint of techno as its impetus. Lightning Dust is like Portishead, exchanging turntables for six-strings. Webber’s voice is downright sexy, though, as she gives Lightning Dust’s songs an assertively feminine sensibility. No place is that draw better evidenced than “The Times,” a song about something opaque and frosty but immediate, a lover’s needs of time, proximity that can make the knees buckle.
While the album withers some toward the end, losing some of its immediacy, it is still a terrific statement. There are lavish moments on Infinite Light that beg the listener to ask, “When was the last time I’ve heard anything quite like this?”
The answer is simply, nowhere.
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