Even on first listen, without context or introduction, the music of The Fauns already seems familiar. Their sound is an amalgam of many of the things I have enjoyed in 2013: The History of Apple Pie, all guitar fuzz and sweetness; the shimmer of the newly-reunited Mazzy Star; the soundtrack to an early Sofia Coppola film; and, on “Point Zero”, the buzz of the crowd at an open-air rock show as imagined by somebody who decided to stay at home on a Friday night.
Lights is actually the second album from the five-piece who - and no offence to people of the south west - couldn’t sound less like they were from Bristol. Pin it on the breathy vocals of Alison Garner if you like because when they’re audible at all they're the sound of a fictionalised Tokyo, or that sweet spot in the middle of the night when you just know that you’re the only person still awake - an unreal, barely-there netherworld. There’s actually a song about just that on the album: it’s called “4am” and it sounds as delicate and as fleeting as you’d expect a song of that name to sound.
When it ends, it’s as if a switch is flicked and the album tumbles downwards to hit the wall of guitar that is the grinding opening of “With You”. The album’s only jarring moment is the transition, because the song itself is as lusty and needy as those whispery vocals can go. Lights then ends with its strongest two tracks: “Let’s Go”, the firecracker pop song that for some reason wasn’t the lead single; and the shimmering, Mazzy Star-esque “Give Me Your Love”. It’s on the latter that Garner’s vocals are both at their most simple and most audible - but who needs to know what the songs are about when the sound is this much of a treat.
Overleaf: watch the video for title track "Lights"
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