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DOWNLOAD: Lightouts - "The Big Picture"
"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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