THERE’S quite a change of direction on the new album by the NYC trio Lightning Bug, who present their most direct and “outgoing” album to date – A Color of the Sky. Taking a dive into blissful slow-core melodies (“I Lie Awake”), the band translates their more experimental, shoegazey background into something deeply emotional, with the moving, warm voice of Audrey Kang (somehow reminiscent of Mimi Parker on this record, take “Wings of Desire” or “The Return”, two of the best songs) always at the forefront.
Surely these are some of the most naked songs in the trio’s career (“Reprise”, which sounds like Low at their most Americana), but the palette does not sound impoverished; rather the opposite.
Fans of Bark Psychosis will be delighted by the brief but majestic instrumental “The Chase”, while “Song of the Bell” provides a refreshing digression into psych-rock territories.
Aside from that, the record is composed of quite reassuring songwriting pieces, but not in a negative way – they are simply the result of the way the record was made, in isolation in the Catskills. The warmth of the trio playing together in that setting exudes from the record, as a result, channeling a sort of therapeutic aura which is appreciable only in the greatest slowcore records (“The Right Thing Is Hard To Do”).
