PEAKING LIGHTS
Lucifer

Domino, 2012

• Favorites:

  “Moonrise,” “Dream Beat”

• Flavors:

  Pure MDMA, whatever “tempeh” is

RATING:

TRACK LIST:

1. Moonrise
2. Beautiful Son
3. Live Love
4. Cosmic Tides
5. Midnight (In The Valley Of Shadows)
6. LO HI
7. Dream Beat
8. Morning Star

THE PROS AND CONS OF PEAKING LIGHTS’ FIRST PROPER RECORD FOR AN ACTUAL LABEL YOU MIGHT HAVE HEARD OF, BUT PROBABLY THEIR SECOND OR THIRD OVERALL DEPENDING ON HOW YOU ARE COUNTING

PROS

—The best description of Peaking Lights’ first properly-distributed record I’ve come up with so far come up with is: “Screamadelica on Vaseline.”
—The best description they’ve come up with themselves is: “Smoother bass lines w/ a heavy dub influence looking outward to private press boogie records, African & Latin rhythms and tranced vibrations of the most killer all night party you’ve never been to: less cocaine, more weed, a sustained orgasm, maintaining 100% creative control, late hot summer nights, come down chill room and low lit zone, lazer light show, smoke machines, being naked and watching the sun rise.”
—Either way, the basic idea is that it has a certain chillaxed eclecticism.
—As a married couple, for some reason, all of Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes’ publicity shots seem to have their infant son in-shot.
—Or is this a negative because they stole the idea from John Doran?
—It’s all so woozy, you could plausibly believe this infant is actually the drummer.
—There’s a euphoria here that pitches towards Spiritualized levels of triumph.
—There’s something of Warpaint in the way these melodies seem to curl around each other; the endless rotation—this sort of spiraling Earth Mother kosmiche fugue they’re grooving off of…is what I’d say if I were reviewing this for P4K.
—”It’s the closest latter-day dub has ever got to Bach.”
—Is what I’d say next.
—…Yet teeters constantly on the edge of chaos.
—This looks set to be The Record Everyone Has To Go Back And Listen To At The End Of The Year ‘Cause It’s Suddenly Turned Up Semi-Unexpectedly On Every Single Best Of The Year Chart. So save yourself time and embarrassment by listening to it now.

CONS

—Writing about the first time they jammed together, Aaron notes about Indra: “She always mentions how this was the first time—while jamming—that she saw out of her third eye.”
—There’s a song on here called “Beautiful Son,” which is almost certainly about their infant promo-shot prop. John Lennon could get away with that sort of thing, but this is because John Lennon’s previous band was the Beatles, not a goth act and a rickety no-wave band, respectively.
—There’s another song called “Midnight (In The Valley Of Shadows).” M83 can get away with that sort of thing, but that’s because he is French. Not Wisconsonian.

VERDICT

Precisely unlikely enough to perversely be very likely to do very well, Lucifer is the straight outta left field hit record that 2012’s release schedule seems to be lacking. For the next ten days or so, you still have a chance to say you were into it before everyone else.