Strangest Colored Lights

13Ghosts | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 18, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Skybucket Records
• ASIN: B0011Z6TSA
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #282,054 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

1. The Lonely Death of Space Avenger -- 2. Soft Houses -- 3. Beyond the Door -- 4. Riverside -- 5. Bury Me -- 6. Faint Goat -- 7. King of the Thieves -- 8. Go To Sleep -- 9. Soon When I'm Gone -- 10. Underground -- 11. Whip Poor Will -- 12. Photographs -- 13. Transmissions

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best undiscovered album this year, August 27, 2008

By 

Denis Prieur - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Strangest Colored Lights (Audio CD)

It is a mystery why this album, and this band, are not better known. The songs are beautifully crafted, the instrumentation is masterful (especially the layered acoustic guitars), yet the whole piece is infused with spirit and grit. The opening track, "The Lonely Death of Space Avenger," is a little masterpiece of surreal bittersweetness, and the final melancholy song, "Transmissions," is a simple melody with a great guitar lick that belies a rather complex narrative.

The lyrics are dark, often ghoulish, but with a literary bent not often heard in indie rock bands. In the gentle, folkish "Soon When I'm Gone," Brad Armstrong sings "If I cut off all my fingers/Would you take my bleeding hands?/Would you hold them quiet in the dark/Til I could sleep again?" Many songs have a narrative quality, like "Transmission," which relates opposite versions of the same vague but allusive story, with each verse alternating between an obsessive and a cavalier side, each ending with the lines "Sorry that it's come to this/But surely you must've known/It was coming down." Or from the eerie tale of troubled youth, "Soft Houses":
"When the summer comes on us we have nowhere to go
I can hardly hold my head up I've been drinking too long
Brush the hair back from your long and desperate handsome face
I can hardly stand it when I come back to this place
Drive down by the train yards smashing bottles on the tracks
Holding on to each other though it'd like to break our backs
I was sorry to see you go down in your lonesome hole
When we come to see you you don't live there anymore

Why oh why has no major indie label picked up these guys? Apparently they have quite a following in Alabama, and have been putting out records for a while. I hope they keep them coming.