Slumberland's Lightheaded announce debut album, Combustible Gems due 17th May
LIGHTHEADED
Announce debut album, Combustible Gems
Due 17th May 2024 on Slumberland Records
UK Tour dates this summer
Slumberland Records are excited to announce the debut album from New Jersey’s Lightheaded. Titled Combustible Gems, it’s a falling, laughing, charming pop debut and follows the trio’s recent EP Good Good Great! which saw copies flying out of UK record shops, becoming an underground hot tip in indie circles.
Lightheaded will come over to the UK for the first time this summer, with dates including London (full info coming soon) and Glasgow’s Glas-Goes Pop fest.
Along with the album announce, the band share first single, the gentle and jangling “Dawn Hush Lullaby”.
Lightheaded - Dawn Hush Lullaby
Stream the single: https://songwhip.com/lightheaded2/dawn-hush-lullaby
Album preorder: https://slumberlandrecs.lsnto.me/combustible-gems
The band’s Stephen Stec says about the song: "I didn’t think of the title Dawn Hush Lullaby, I found it. Awhile back, I had fallen for someone with a really lovely voice who lived far away so we would be texting for hours, but I could read her messages in her voice and replay our conversations in my head. I was alone one night, scrolling on Tumblr, when I saw a post from 1934, where Wilfred J Funk listed the ten most beautiful words in the English language. The first three? Dawn. Hush. Lullaby. And that’s just how her voice sounded.”
Lightheaded are, simply, a great pop group. Their songs are full of melody and harmony, are bittersweet and memorable, familiar yet original. Their sound is a perfect mix of jangling guitars -- featuring Sarah Abdlebarry's exquisite, tasteful, but punchy Gretsch lead played over Stephen Stec's Rickenbacker chime -- anchored to singer Cynthia Rickenbach's Hofner Violin bass.
The album will be released on vinyl, CD and digital. Glasgow's Monorail Music will have a limited edition exclusive baby blue vinyl pressing.
UK live dates TBA soon
Cynthia and Stephen write pop songs in the classic sense, and though they are young they're already familiar with the good stuff. Cynthia wears a Gene Clark tee shirt and is a fan of Dusty Springfield, The Aislers Set, and Joan Jett. Stephen worships at the altar of Big Star, The Clientele, and The Go-Betweens. As with bands like The Aislers Set and Belle & Sebastian, you hear an aural kaleidoscope, the history pop music and the best rock and roll, in the music of Lightheaded.
What you hold in your hand now is their debut LP Combustible Gems - an LP about a band finding their sound, exploring notes, chords, and melody and making uncannily great music along the way. First single "Dawn Hush Lullaby" features an electric folk-pop sensibility that starts like a waltz, but goes into Greenwich Village pop time, like a sweet Norma Tanega tune. "Moments Notice" is a killer tune, rhythmic and catchy. It starts off like Motown or The Jam, but then Sara's hypnotic, hooky guitar riff takes the song some place else, shooting off into soft pop heaven, like kid siblings of the Free Design.
"Hugging Horizons" is the Sound of Young New Jersey. It's soul music, but by experimenting and playing around, they have accidentally invented some sort of New New Pop. "Because of You" ends the album on a real high, featuring Johnny Marr style guitar and some gorgeous strings. It's poignant and sophisticated, but still eager, slightly gauche even. And as always refreshingly, wonderfully, naively sincere.
Combustible Gems is a jump into the sparkling blue water, excited experimentation, exploration, finding themselves, with the effervescence of youth that makes for great debut LPs. It has the youthful urgency of Comet Gain, the wide-eyed nostalgia of early Orange Juice, the suss and anti-macho swagger of those early Pastels singles. It yearns for something, it is an exciting, stumbling, falling, laughing, charming, great pop debut.
Tracklisting
1. Always Sideways
2. Dawn Hush Lullaby
3. Moments Notice
4. Still Sitting Sunday
5. Bright Happy Girls
6. Hugging Horizons
7. You and Your Mother
8. Because of You
Preorder:
https://slumberlandrecs.lsnto.me/combustible-gems
CONNECT
https://www.instagram.com/lightheadedband
