Review: An Evening with Light Pollution
After adjusting to the cheery disposition of the folks who run Vera Project, consisting mostly of under agers, we went downstairs to the stage.
The first act, Einar Stokka, produced clever, twangy, almost-folk infused acoustic songs (we overheard a fellow concert-goer make a Tallest Man on Earth comparison) with lyrics reminiscent of a love lost Shel Silverstein. Catchy, but not particularly substance rich.
Light Pollution puts their best efforts forth when performing: Their live songs exude a shaky glow that you can’t quite catch on their album. It’s unrefined and unperfected, rootless, like dripping honey. Stand out live tracks include “Drunk Kids” (a self directed music video that we’re so glad has finally been done. Note flashing ‘Pot’ sign, ghost-like lady figure) and their latest single, woozy and drum heavy “Witchcraft.” Lead singer Jim Cicero is doe-eyed and pouty, and slightly wobbly on his feet as they crash into a washout of dazed songs that radiate a hazed warmth that one would be surprised to hear, after learning that they were crafted in a cold warehouse outside the city of Chicago.
Afterwards, we paced the neighboring blocks of the Vera Project with Cicero, passing SUV’s and station wagons full of screaming American Idol fans (the top 10 contestants played at the Key Arena the same evening), joking about looping the shrieks and screeches into backing tracks for their next album. Over the course of our talk, he smokes somewhere between 10 and 20 cigarettes, but it’s hard to say for sure.
Cicero tells us that he lived in an abandoned warehouse during the year ‘Apparitions’ was created. Freezing and isolated, the year was well spent, but exhausting. So was there a point where Light Pollution realized that their effort was finally paying off? “There was probably a two month period of time - February and March, mostly - where everything pretty much came together at once, really fast. All of the emailing and demo sending finally came together.”
The conversation switches to life on the road. To the kindness of headliners they’ve toured with, to the dichotomy of Missouri (“it’s just a f***ed up state, all around. One side of the highway is all porn stores and peep shows, and the other side has these super conservative signs protesting it,”) to a near death experience with a mama bear on a campsite in Ohio. Is life on the road the lifestyle he’d imagined it to be? Ciero inhales a cigarette. “No, not really. You grow out of that really fast. That’d be like still believing in Santa Claus. It’s just not real.”
The tangible future for Light Pollution includes a tour with trippy-rock label mates Prince Rama, and recording this winter. At this point in their career, survival mode for them seems to not consist of questioning, nor contemplating, the immediate state of the band, or the recognition they’ve received. Having the ability to achieve stillness by being at the mercy of whatever comes next only further guarantees that this is just the beginning for them, and we predict bigger and better things to come.
Casiokids, the last act of the evening, sealed the show by producing a set so infectiously and effortlessly bouncy and sweet, grinning and shaking their fruit-shaped musical instruments, that it compensated for all the Norwegian metal bands that their country occupies.
We predicted this show to be like a midnight dance party in a beach house. It was more like a rave in the middle of the ocean.
