 Lanterns On The Lake – THE RUBY LOUNGE, MANCHESTER – Lanterns On The Lake are a moody Geordie band – doesn’t sound right, I know, but that oxymoron sort of sums up their sound, dramatic but never without a tinge of ever-present joy. The five-piece’s stellar new track ‘Faultlines’, the first single to be taken off their third album Beings, sort of sums that up. ‘Dust and Matter’, the opening track of their very new album, is more on the drama side and a joy to see live. Hazel Wilde, the humble but humorous lead singer, writes lyrics that are extremely honest, often painfully so, and in the song’s most dramatic moment Hazel yearns ‘I passed out on the kitchen floor’, before a timely punch of the drums comes in to swell the drama. Live, it’s so effective. They continue the drama by playing a spellbinding transition to take us straight into ‘Elodie’. Just like when those drums came in during ‘Dust and Matter’, this is huge throughout, but full of moments of folky lightness too. ‘Another Tale From Another English Town’ is slightly more conventional than what we’ve heard so far but, as always, they still manage to bring the drama in just at the right time. It’s an impressive skill. If we weren’t impressed enough, the cellist now swaps for the keys and Hazel takes up the guitar. Next comes the unmistakeable intro to ‘Faultlines’; the intro and the song itself is accessible without being cheap. Lanterns On The Lake have always been great, but this one, for me, symbolises the perfect balance of drama and lightness that they’ve fallen upon on ‘Beings’. Despite Hazel’s self-deprecating joke that they haven’t got many songs to dance to, the band then manages to keep the sound upbeat with the bombastic ‘Kingdom’. The songs that make up the rest of their set list, particularly ‘I’ll Stall’, ‘Beings’ and ‘Sleepy Head’, drive home that Lanterns On The Lake have a unique quality – the skill to garnish each song with a moment of unavoidable quality. It allows us to both stand back and admire their beauty in one moment and dance with joy in the next. Captivating. Lanterns On The Lake Official | Facebook | Twitter |
Hi all, my name is Paddy and I have a love for everything from African music to indie to house (basically anything other than heavy metal). Gigging and listening to albums are genuinely the things I most value and love doing.
