DOWNLOAD: Lightouts - "The Big Picture"

Earlier this month, Brooklyn eletro-rock duo Lightouts released their fifth single, "The Big Picture" and this will be band's last single before their debut album, Want, comes out later this year.

"The Big Picture" premiered on Spinner.com a few days ago and singer Greg Nelson described the song as "a fuzzed-out epic pop juggernaut about transcending doubt, circumstance and fate. 'Hearts can change, spells will break'". While I don't know about all that - Lightouts is the first band that I've heard in a long time whose music captures the melodies and urgent rhythms of post-punk bands like The Cure and New Order. Adding to the comparison to The Cure, Lightouts close the new three-track single with a cover of The Cure's "Push".

Below is the A-side to one of the band's earlier singles - "The Cure for Shyness".



Lightouts Bio (snippet):
It started with a want ad, plastered across the board of a post-industrial space near the Gowanus Canal. The request? Quite simple: “Robert Smith/Emily Haines, where are you?” The kind of thing you’d expect from a New Mexico native who studied the Cure’s bleak but beautiful hooks at a time when riff-raking guitar heroes were all the rage.

“People would always say, ‘Why would you want to play like Robert Smith?’” explains Lightouts founder Gavin Rhodes, last heard in the one-man band Honeypower. “‘Wouldn’t you rather learn how to shred instead?”

Not quite. More like become the instrument-swapping backbone of a fuzz-flecked band like the Jesus & Mary Chain. Enter Greg Nelson, the only sane person who answered Rhodes’ call. Luckily he was exactly what Lightouts needed: a seasoned member of the NYC music scene with the war stories to prove it (let’s just say Lady Gaga opened up for his band Luxe Pop at a Lower East Side club in 2007). More importantly, Nelson’s a natural at toeing the line between darkness and light, as exemplified by the sky-scraping choruses of “See Clear,” the sinewy melodies of “The Eloise Suite,” and the vapor trail verses of “Dress Shop.”

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