LIGHTNING DUST at the Drake Underground, Tuesday, September 10. Rating: NNNN
To best enjoy Tuesday night’s bill of synth-heavy Vancouver bands, you had to surrender to both acts’ relatively withdrawn, slow-burning vibes. There were no grand gestures. Earplugs were far from necessary. And most of us were home by midnight. It was refreshing.
Louise Burns and her three-piece band – made up of half of Ladyhawk – took the stage shortly after 9 pm, which meant the room was fairly empty at first. Her reverb-drenched Nicksian vocals rang out loud and clear, and her melodic, noir-pop Midnight Mass songs stuck close to the album versions. The decision to play in almost near darkness, however, had a distancing effect.
Headliners Lightning Dust righted this immediately with an illuminated stage (initially too much for vocalist Amber Webber, who asked for slightly dimmer lights after the first song) and three-quarters of the band dressed in light colours. They grooved, interacted with each other, and handled a loud heckler/friend with grace, all while delivering a kind of greatest-hits package culled from their three albums.
Even with a four-member band, the songs retained a stripped-down quality due to electronic drums and a ratio of three synths to one (barely used) acoustic guitar. The songwriting, especially on new album Fantasy, is engaging and memorable, swinging between downtempo electro and danceable synth rock that let the eager crowd cut loose.
Like Burns’s, Webber’s vocals are everything. The singer, also a member of Black Mountain, as is keyboardist Joshua Wells, reined in her dramatic vibrato, offering it up at choice moments, to great effect. Like on the ballad Agatha, which featured a superb guest cellist and was achingly beautiful.
