Lamplight

USバージニア州育ち、地元のコミュニティカレッジでデザインやプログラミングを学ぶ間、様々なバンドで腕を鳴らし英気を養ってきたイアン・ハッチャー・ウィリアムス。故郷バージニア州とNY両方を舞台に制作した、ランプライト名義で初のフルアルバムをリリース!

先行公開された2曲"CALL YOUR MOM"、"HOUSE RULES"に通底する牧歌的な要素とUSインディらしい煌びやかなギター音の融合、即ちウィルコライクなセンスがたまらない!そこにALEX G級メロディが乗っかり、リスナーの涙腺を刺激する!
ライトニング・バグの一員として名を馳せるケヴィン・コープランドのプロデュース手腕も光り、MVに表現されている全編マッタリのんべんだらり空気に満ちた快作です!

The seeds of Lamplight were planted in Brooklyn, when Virginia native Ian Hatcher-Williams, then inactive as a musician, was getting burned out by big-city life and a tech job that left time for little else. At one point, he met Kevin Copeland of indie group Lightning Bug, who encouraged him to get back to music. Hatcher-Williams and his wife, a childhood friend also from Virginia, ultimately decided to move back home, and it took about a year to make it happen. The reflective eponymous debut of his solo alias, Lamplight, was inspired by the hopes, anxieties, and personal growth surrounding this time in his life. Copeland produced and engineered the album at Science Is Magic Studios in Vermont. An intimate and warmly intricate set of songs, it opens with the brittle vocals, light guitar twang, brushed shuffle rhythm, and subtly swelling atmosphere of "Play," an apprehensive song about transition ("Heard its peaceful there/But do you have the patience?"). The album soon takes a more psychedelic turn on the feedback-injected, vaguely Beatlesque "Stillness," whose ruminations jump from backyard birds to microplastics. Not all rooted in anxiety, the album also includes the hazier, drunken "Call Your Mom," which reminds us to reach out to loved ones (and includes an unexpected trombone solo), and driving highlight "Empathy" opens with the line "No one really lives in isolation." Like several of the songs here, the latter has a shape to it established not only by structure (repetition) but by dynamics and density. There are some affectionate tributes here, as well, including a title track about Hatcher-Williams 20-year acquaintance with his spouse ("Holding hands at 11/You cant know where its going") and the fiddle- and piano-bolstered "Honey," whose welcoming acceptance adopts the voice of his father. A fittingly nuanced, organic, and intimate set given its inspirations, Lamplight delivers on both craft and substance. ~ Marcy Donelson