And Making A Special Gest Appearance...
How do you know when you’ve hit the big time? Is it playing a major music festival before being signed to a record label? Is it having several major labels fighting it out to sign you? Or perhaps is it when you can call the shots on your music videos? What? You want professional oddball David Gest with his weird, painted on hair in your video? Oh, and special guest appearances from The Little People of Davidland and Chinese Girls with Herpes? You got it.
Attic Lights have had phenomenal success over the past twelve months. From getting signed from relative obscurity; being catapulted into the big time and gaining praise and plaudits all the time: it is the stuff that high expectations are made from.
All teeming with warm sunshiny harmonies, sweeping strings and sweet sentiments, Friday Night Lights shimmers with confidence. They are a band which could excite the middle aged music fan bracket just as much as the lucrative teenage market. Unashamedly guitar pop; employing dreamy Beach Boy style harmonies and in places sounding a little like the much maligned late 90s indie kids and fellow Scots, Astrid, they could herald a bit of a sea change in the music world. Instead of the usual snarls and incomprehensible lyrics, there is something far more palatable here. Although fey and twee are too strong as descriptives, there are the lightest touches of these elements delicately peppered throughout the album and instead of being overbearing, it is just enough to see this album through.
There too are obvious similarities between the band and laid back, lo-fi charm of Teenage Fanclub (they were coincidently produced by the band’s drummer, Francis MacDonald), especially with the faint strains of Americana which underpin each track, most notably in ‘Late Night Sunshine’ and ‘Wendy’. Not wholly apparent throughout, but small flourishes point fingers in the direction of their Scottish brethren.
Although they may be eclipsed by fellow Glaswegians, Glasvegas in the ‘album of the year’ stakes, Friday Night Lights remains a competent, coherent album which sounds so incongruent to the current indie stock; it is like a holiday for the ears. Expectations, very much fulfilled.