Quite where the nu-folk revolution goes next is anyone’s guess, but We See Lights’ press clipping suggests that they’re pretty well entrenched in the Scottish scene – with gigs with Frightened Rabbit and We Were Promised Jetpacks as well as Eugene McGuinness under their belts. Indeed, as opener ‘So Long Love’ winds down and speeds up like a breaking heart and stumbles into the first proper tune here – ‘A Safer Sound’ – the band’s stall is well and truly set out. Big lusty choruses and thickly accented vocals, which, the first time you hear them, hit you square in the face, like a well-aimed Begbie hook (if Trainspotting references aren’t a bit outre).
‘Sing In Your Own Voice’, whose title could be their maxim, instead begins with a beautifully-harmonised intro before the main event comes rolls in. Because, We See Lights are all about the choruses. Yes, the lyrics – where they “dream of lands we’ll never go to”, and are “Gonna make it… better”, again sounds like the design for life of any aspirational 20th century Scot.
But really, these are secondary to the songs and their easy, singalong, combination of evocative verses and chest-thumping choruses. Past single ‘Parachutes’ is on here too and has all of the above, plus glockenspiel, brass, and a boy-girl vocal interchange that veers somewhere between the Carpenters and Nick and Kylie… except with accents that convey the battle-scarred bitterness that the lyric demands.
Really, WSL could be the indie Runrig, or a My Latest Novel destined for the charts rather than the empty rack marked ‘seminal’ in that great record store in the sky.
