Light Breaks for Searching Pop Band

Trying to leap from EP to LP is daunting when you are a band like Great Northern. Shedding the vox similarities of casual pop duos and instead creating a meatier supplementary sound is the heavy burden of time in between. But for the west coast troupe, the juice can be well worth the squeeze. Like a comfortable abode and a cocktail in hand comes the band’s debut effort Trading Twilight for Daylight. It seems almost criminal that something this good comes from LA.

Most of the ten track effort plays on a duality of male to female banter and trade offs with a supporting cast of dream pop. Rachel Stolte and Salon Bixler are able to less joust but layer their efforts along standard keys and guitars. Opener ‘Our Bleeding Hearts’ perfectly displays Stolte’s Kari Gardner-like spellbinding vocals when accompanied by floating bells and waning synths. Twinkling ‘A Sun A Sound’ stands as one of the albums best by letting the band take off and not rely on words to carry the song, only comparable to the likes of Band of Horses in a meditative sort of way. Departure effort ‘Into The Sun’, with its fuzzed out guitars and hand-clapped rock-a-billy pumping center shows the bands budding prospective on their own sound - as if to becoming convinced with themselves by the end of the effort.

But the center of the cherry is a sour pit of folky meditative blah that otherwise tears the fabric of the albums stronger parts. Every song is different, but just slightly from the last as if to only change the color scheme but not the entire outfit. The bloating sound of ‘Low Is A Height’ and the too tired for its own good introspective ‘City of Sleep’ are forgettable when you know how much better it can be on the significant ‘Babies’ and it’s Jets Overhead melody. But man, when they rock, it’s just vast sounding growls of guitars combating happy chimes. Unfortunately they don’t do it enough here.

Twilight lays somewhere close to its namesake. The band, still attempting to find its one true sound past the safe realms of lukewarm indie pop rock, are moving ever so closer to standing out in a crowded plateau with the sun overhead and not to their backs. The album is by no means standard - just look at the deep lyrical love not far from a less depressive Elliot Smith that unfortunately rides shotgun instead of driving the bus. Twilight comes off rather blasé in a cool way. Just don’t expect anything groundbreaking but instead uncomplicated pop.

Sean Kendall