Lights - Rites (Album)

Rites is the second album by Brooklyn quartet-of-sorts Lights. We say ‘of-sorts’, because the fourth member of the band, Wizard Smoke, doesn’t actually play a note on the record, but contributes artwork and visuals for their live shows.

It may seem a bit of an outlandish concept to credit as a band member a person with no input on the recordings, but in the case of Lights, it makes a perverse kind of sense. The ethos here is that of a joyful collective, a band playing purely for themselves. The songs which constitute Rites progress at entirely their own pace, building a mood which is free from any kind of inhibitions.

The record is powered by the dual forces of the fallen angel vocal harmonies of Sophia Knapp and Linnea Vedder, and some proper old fashioned grubby stoner rock. It straddles the line between girlish sweetness, and heavy wooziness, which produces an end result which is as fun as it is stirring.

Rites’ fun side is borne out of the playfulness which is present on the album from start to finish. It’s there in the sleazy horns on ‘Can You Hear Me’, which, from most other bands would be a bit too on the nose. It’s also there in vast quantities on ‘Fire Night’. Take a throbbing bassline, some spoken word (or growled-word, to be more accurate) male French vocals, some heavy psychedelic guitars, mix in some suggestive girly cooing, and you’ve got a prime recipe for some wonderfully filthy stoner-disco.

For all the prettiness of the vocals, there’s a deliciously devilish air underpinning them throughout. On ‘Hold On’, for example, the refrain of "hold on, my little darling" is more than just a rallying cry to a loved one, it’s a siren-call shot through with wickedness. As well as this, the aforementioned ‘Fire Night’ puts paid to any notions of innocence suggested by the ever so slightly tongue in cheek white-robe clad images of the band in the artwork.

The main focal point of Rites, an album hardly lacking in highlights, is it’s second-last song ‘Nothing Left to Build’. It’s the song which encapsulates Lights’ philosophy best, summing up exactly what they’re about in a shade over four minutes. A gentle, simple guitar melody lifts into more of those beautiful harmonies, underpinned by some delicate fuzziness. The whole thing feels like at any moment it might soar off skywards, dragging you eagerly along with it.

So with Rites, Lights might well have delivered (dare we say it) one of 2009’s best records. There’s so much to enjoy here. It is an album which is driven by a duality of dark and light, of beauty and force, all of which make it such an enriching and substantial listen.