Finding a name for your band now that everyone with half an inkling and access to the Internet can cast up their banal offerings to the world under a myriad of monikers is a tough job. It needs to be something that stands out in the hubbub and hubris but not to the extent that it makes you look ‘wacky’ – that way, obscurity and ignoring a-plenty await.
Hats off then to Vaporous Light, who have invoked the spirit of the late 60s and early 70s with their nod to the heavy-soft combinations of the likes of Led Zeppelin and Iron Butterfly. And as a result of following that system, it comes with the double advantage of fitting the band’s music down to the ground – which might well be why they chose to name the album the same.
Vaporous Light – the album – is at once both sprawling, meandering and dense (the Vaporous half) and glistening, searing and warm (hence the Light bit). It dives and swirls through a palette of emotions and styles, weaving lyrical calling cards into the ethereal mix for added pleasure.
Take Charming News with its endlessly empowering yet utterly defeating repetition of the lyric ‘Forget all the money that you haven’t got’. It is a wandering spirit of a tune, creating an aural equivalent of the drunk wise old man at the bar offering both the sweetest and the most truthful of advice while the house band revolves again and again around a magical melody which dips and soars like a starling at dusk.
Such broad brushstroke colour and intensely particular detail is replicated across every other part of the album. The Eyes Of A Fool, for example, sounds like a folk revival skiffle version of a Stone Roses instrumental while simultaneously making you consider what life would be like if acoustic guitars, rather synthesisers were the weapon of choice on dancefloor fillers.
And still the album wheels on and away, slipping unexpected excitements into unusual corners for the listener to discover, such as the mournful moonlit melodica and deep gentle, almost womblike bass of Money or the Stereolab-esque underpinning of the desperate and delicious I Keep My Musket Close.
Vaporous Light is a delight – an enigma trapped inside a mystery hidden inside an album, all waiting to be unwrapped and unravelled by the adventurous ear.
Buy a copy here
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