This Wellington duo is making all the right noises both musically and through the reception of said music. Reviewers continue to laud the pair with comments that can be surmised in near salivating terms and with their new album, Another Life it is easy to see why.
The album fuzzes into life with a grizzly intro that evaporates into thudding drums and the striking and delicate vocals of Julia Catherine Parr on ‘Give it up’. Parr, a classically trained vocalist, dances her sweet sounds around the beats of Calum Robb. Rob provides the ultimate soundscape for Parr with electric shock snare cracks intermingled with haunting bass and driving rhythms. The pair harness each other’s qualities superbly on the track ‘Children’, which is one of the stand-out songs on the album.
The jolty and swinging beats used on ‘Offering’ provide a tectonic springboard which sets Parr’s vocals off and leaping through the graces of her extensive range. She sores up to the high notes and swishes back down through the melody arriving at punchy choruses. The punching is left to Robb’s beats on ‘Another Life’ as Parr’s vocals fade almost into instrumentation. The song seems to act more as a backdrop to an uprising of renegade fighters than to a dance party, but it is the ease in which Black City Lights sweep between electro-pop and something far more unnerving that makes them so interesting.
Fans of the current influx in exciting electronic pop and chill wave or who have been delving into the likes of The xx, Toro Y Moi, oOooO and Baths will find something on this album to interest them. Download Another Life free via the Black City Lights' bandcamp for a limited time.
