Talk to any Mid Westerner and they’ll often apologise for their surrounding areas according to Light Pollution frontman Jim Cicero. In Cicero’s case, you can go about it in two ways. Living in a cold 30, 000 square foot warehouse has given him mixed opinions. On the one hand, he’ll tell you that it’s fantastic for writing music and the influence can clearly be heard but we’ll get to that in a while. On the other end however, Cicero might be accounted for in the Mid Westerners he has spoken about.
Apparitions comes across like the above descriptions, it’s a bit hit and miss. Opening track ‘Good Feelings’ is a mixture of swirling Animal Collective like synth lines and over top, almost anthemic like choruses. ‘Fever Dreams’ on the other hand is a catchy, modest 80’s like pop song which might bring memories of the Cure back to some. However, it seems that the name might be a curse for the band. Often the band seems try to be far too psychedelic and over reverberant and it pollutes the overall sound with far too much going on. Cicero’s vocals should be a highlight of the music but it often gets drowned out by the music, a prime example being ‘Oh, Ivory’ where his vocals are more often than not inaudible in the otherwise catchy Broken Social Scene like song. It also feels that the band try to reach above their station. Massive build ups are great when used properly but the band misses this with the unnesscery muddle up of instruments and the excessively loud (in a bad way) build ups in the likes of ‘All Night Outside’ and ‘Bad Vibes.’ The band show however that they can do large build ups well. ‘Witchcraft’ for example sounds phenomenal from middle to end with its Arcade Fire like anthemic melodic build up.
It’s a shame really. The fantastic catchy 80’s like beats, the psychedelic loops and the big, melodic anthemic build ups are let down by the over abundant inclusion of unnecessary elements. It’d be great if the band could carry on what they do well in the music but sometimes they ruin it by reaching a little too far.
