Impose Premieres Lightouts' Take on Classic Cure Track
Critical Praise for Lightouts:
"Gowanus duo Lightouts resurrect the melancholy chug and darkly sexy swagger of bands like The Cure, Girls Against Boys, JAMC and Afghan Whigs and impolitely jam it into the drum machine crunch of contemporary locals like Sleigh Bells, Year Of The Tiger and the Death Set."
- Chris Weingarten, The Village Voice
"I require precisely no convincing that Lightouts are brilliant, but if you're in any doubt then by all means check out their new single, 'The Cure For Shyness.'"
- Listen Before You Buy "Best New Release"
- Indie Rock Cafe
The Song:
Lightouts' forthcoming fifth single (and last before their debut LP), "The Big Picture," will be out in a few weeks, and as with their first four singles, the Gowanus boys have included a cover tune along with their originals. This time they tackled a deep cut by The Cure -- "Push" from 1985's The Head On the Door. It's a faster, more muscular version of the song that still retains the melancholic grandeur of the original.
Why The Cure this time? Rumor has it that chief Lightouts songwriter Gavin Rhodes used to tease his hair and wear eyeliner in the 8th grade, so this is a bit of a musical homecoming for the band. Rhodes had this to say about the cover: "This is one of those Cure songs that show why the stereotypical perceptions of the band as all keyboards, gloom, and doom are so wrong. I think this is one of the best guitar driven pop-songs of all time. Soaring, anthemic, wistful, it's just amazing to me. This guitar riff alone was hugely influential in my development on the guitar. And the lyric, 'A smile to hide the fear away / I'll smear this man across the walls / Like strawberries and cream,' is simply brilliant."
For more information on Lightouts please contact Gavin or Marissa at Audible Treats.
The
Background:
Lightouts founder Gavin Rhodes started with a simple question: "Robert Smith/Emily Haines, where are you?" But this appeal to fans of The Cure and Metric didn't appear on Craigslist or in The Village Voice. The flyer was posted near the less-than-picturesque Gowanus Canal. Greg Nelson, a veteran of the NYC music scene, responded to the ad and the rest, as they say, is history. The pair exhibit a rare musical and stylistic cohesion: structured bass lines, waves of fuzzed out guitars and vaporous vocals put a new spin on the moody post-punk aesthetic of bands like Joy Division and Smashing Pumpkins circa Siamese Dream. A loosely linked concept album – Want, a meditation on what it means to follow our instincts – is in the works and in the months leading up to the unveiling of the album, the Gowanus duo is set to release a series of singles. With a tip of the hat to an analogue era in the not-so-distant past, each single will feature both an A-side and two B-sides allowing the band to offer up songs complemented by experimentation into deep-cut covers.
