City Light, Down The Pacific

With Down The Pacific, City Light have something of a surprise-attack thing going on. When I first put it in the car stereo, nothing really clicked for me in a major way, and I yanked it back out after only a few songs. I instantly pegged the band’s sound as a fuzzy, electronified variety of indie-pop, with half-sleepy vocals, snapping, sometimes-electronic drums, and guitars that blur into synths; basically, a softer, less-intrusive Say Hi, a less-pastoral Postal Service, or maybe a less-popcult-heavy Aqueduct. All of which makes sense, given that the band started out as a Postal Service-esque long-distance collab between Northwestern U.S.-dwelling songwriter Matt Shaw, S.F. hip-hop producer Nick Andre, Aqueduct bassist (and Seattleite) Andy Fitts, and Nashville denizen and Statistics/Intramural/Desaparecidos/general everywhere man Denver Dalley.

And honestly, the above is pretty much what City Light sounds like, at least at a quick glance. When I tried out Down The Pacific with the headphones on, though, everything that I’d dismissed as been-done-before dull haze immediately snapped into intense, attention-grabbing focus. I’m not entirely sure what happened, really, except that there’re definitely albums floating around out there that are distinctly “headphones albums,” and apparently this is one of ’em. With the earbuds in, the overfuzzed guitar/synths sound massive, a crushing (yet still warm and comforting) wall of noise that provides a bed for the rest of the music to fall into.

The vocals are definitely in Say Hi territory, narcoleptic yet engaging, but they suddenly took on a more desperate, melancholy feel — especially on “I See,” which mixes hip-hop breakbeats and swaying, swirling guitars to nice effect, and opener “Waiting,” where the lyrics take on the tone of a patient man about to snap, falling away at the end as the music collapses into stuttering sampled drums. Things break loose from there, though, like with the seriously Bloc Party-esque nu-New Wave of “Let’s Not Speak,” with its driving beat and sweet lyrics defining the things that both separate and hold a pair of people together.

Then there’s “Hang On,” which takes the drifting, half-awake vocals and marries ’em to an NWA beat and ultra-fuzzed bass; I’m really digging what I’m guessing is producer Andre’s history producing folks like Gift of Gab bleeding through here. It works damn well on the sinister bump of “Hwy 99” and the Radiohead-gone-trip-hop groove of “Cityscape,” to boot, turning both tracks into murky slices of an urban soundscape. At the same time, there’s some seriously shoegaze-y stuff on Down The Pacific, too, namely “I See You” and the M83-ish “Evil Twin,” and even a dollop of Guided By Voices pure-pop gorgeousness (the meditative, gentle “Hour on the Floor”).

By the time I get to the soft prodding forward of “Night Train,” at the tail end of the album, with its nicely understated, fuzzy/scratchy synth lines, I’ve had to take that initial dismissal and spin it 180 degrees. I haven’t been so happy to have to change my mind about something in quite a while.