AU – Both Lights

AU’s latest album is typically arcane, yet it crackles with access points. As always, a casual cadre of guests expand upon Luke Wyland’s intricate compositions, with frequently exceptional results: punchy opener Epic is an explosion of rapidly-tapped guitars, with a gradually-building sax undertow courtesy of Colin Stetson; Get Alive switches track by entwining Wyland’s baleful croon with Holland Andrews’ airier counter-vocals, over playful AnCo-friendly psych-pop; while Solid Gold again benefits from Stetson’s bestowment, a vigorous jazz solo enlivening the track’s closing minutes.

Throughout, Both Lights radiates at unpredictable tangents, but always naturally; this doesn’t feel like experimentation for the sake of it, more like the fruits of a musical mind instinctively following its synapses wherever they fire, without stopping to question either methods or results. To be privy to such explorations is a treat, albeit an occasionally long-winded one that could only benefit in future from tighter editorial reins.