Colours Yet To Be Named

Lightning in a Twilight Hour are another band built around the heartbreak of Bobby Wratten, and like the Field Mice, Northern Picture Library, and Trembling Blue Stars, their albums are made up of songs that trickle like warm tears down the cheeks of a heartbroken soul. Colours Yet to Be Named has all the hallmarks of his work: precisely jangling guitars, dub-inspired basslines, soothingly dark synth pads, and vocals that alternately glide on top of, or sink into, the gloom. Wratten is joined as he was on the groups previous masterpiece of overwhelming melancholy Overwintering by longtime collaborators Anne Marie Davies and Beth Arzy on vocals along with producer Ian Catt and bassist Michael Hiscock. They work together seamlessly to create a soft cocoon of sound thats malleable enough to stretch from shimmering pop songs like "Red Comet" to elongated machine folk ballads ("Addicere"), spacious post-rock ("The No-Sound of Falling Snow"), thrumming electronic experimentation ("Graph Paper"), and drumless dream pop ("Folk Radio"). Every subtle and well-considered twist and turn is as deeply satisfying as the last as the record unspools its delights slowly and surely. Only the drum-forward, near shoegaze "Every Flame a Sunset" has the immediacy of vintage Field Mice, its a somewhat stunning track that does nothing to break the mood the rest of the album creates, its glimmering hooks only serve to deepen the autumnal haze in which the rest of the album finds itself securely moored. Wratten and his trusted compatriots have put together another album well worth losing oneself in, the emotional impact is tangible, and the beauty conjured up by the harmony between the voices is painfully good in the way a good cry can be. Colours Yet to Be Named isnt easy listening, but like everything Wratten has ever done, its important listening for anyone who wants to understand heartache in all its desperately romantic glory. ~ Tim Sendra