New CD from The Love Lights

After recording Problems & Solutions, the Love Lights emerged a more sentient band. Aware of the instrumentation, musicianship, and enthusiasm at our disposable, we began pairing melodies and rhythms reminiscent of the ones we were raised on and currently enraptured with. We began smiling more when we plucked our strings, beat on our drums, and blew our horns (which is fairly difficult to do at the same time).

The song "Fences" was the first song we wrote for the album that explicitly recalled those roots and influences. With only rough sketches to guide them, the Love Lights’ horns, Jeremiah, Sarah, and Diana crafted what I still believe is a brilliant counter-melody to Rob’s vocal melody. It’s bold, melodic, and unison; it sounds like something the Stax horns would have played behind Otis Redding. The first time we played it in rehearsal, the lights in the room got brighter (I swear!), brows were raised, and a new precedent was set.

At the time, I had just seen the documentary A Great Day in Harlem, about the once in a lifetime gathering of jazz greats for a single photograph. At one point, one of the older musicians referred to the young musicians "young lions." This was the next generation, paying tribute to the structures, melodies, and rhythms of their predecessors, but bringing a new fire and electricity to the fold. Still cubs, to be sure, but they could bite. There was something of the that same fire and electricity in what the Love Lights were now doing, and the phrase appropriately stuck.

Young Lions is not a perfect record, but it is the start of something new and old. And, as Joey "The Lips" Fagan said in the film, The Commitments: "I believe in starts." Listening to the completed Young Lions, this is a start that the Love Lights are excited to share with you.

Debut album from The Love Lights

A unique fusion of indie pop music with a shot of a three part horn section. The first full length album that was the stepping stone of a very unique band. In Problems & Solutions, The Love Lights first attempt at creating pop music for people to dance to, the listener is introduced to a concept that the band would later alter by taking the soul underlinings and running as fast as possible. Problems and Solutions is a unique approach; a cornerstone work from one of the Northwest's most unique bands.