Vancouver’s Lightning Dust is a sibling band to the heavier psych-rock outfit Black Mountain, comprised of two key players from that band working on a more ethereal, ghostly plane. Keyboardist Joshua Wells and vocalist Amber Webber (both also featured in Pink Mountaintops) take a completely different route on this side project debut, exploring a more sensual, folkier sound. It’s all mood here, tracks flowing like cheap red wine and tambourines flickering like candles at the end of their wick. The instrumentation is sparse, and most songs — save for the nearly giddy guilty pleasure that is “Wind Me Up” — have a somber tone, driven by Webber’s haunting, warm voice. “Take Me Back” is a creeper, Webber’s quivering vocals floating atop sustained organ notes and ominous, reverb-dipped guitar notes, feeling like a ‘60s relic dug up from a woozy, late-night session with Buffy Sainte-Marie, while the harrowing “Jump In” (featuring Wells’ vocals) carries the same weight as a Leonard Cohen song-poem of love to the end.
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