You can’t fake sincerity when so many want to join your pledge. Chicago’s own A Lull deploy a serious serving of devout songs that beg for further examination. They’re simply so textured with luminous consecration to sonic beauty it’s a wonder one wouldn’t require numerous listens right out of the gate.
This calls to mind how I discovered this band in the first place. My friend Will and I rode over to the Empty Bottle one fateful Monday evening to see a headline band whose name now escapes me. A Lull opened and immediately demanded attention. They weren’t forcing us to notice, rather venturing deeply into their entire catalogue. They chose to showcase their latest EP, Ice Cream Bones, a lavish, delicately thrust-together effort that blends perfectly with your favorite tribal-sounding Indie favorites.
The album itself is a hush, almost muted representation of what the band morphs into in a live setting. The songs become public displays of affection so sonically endearing they almost entirely erase the impact of the recorded songs. This isn’t to say the tunes aren’t invigorating. They are memorably authentic ditties that don’t follow any particular lead, and yet somehow “find” what they’re looking for.
Turning “noise” into “music” can seem like an entirely random slew of circumstantial luck. With an influx of art-rock bands inundating us with songs we’re not sure we entirely “get” yet, A Lull provides us with a tranquil allotment of hooks that prove more memorable than anything most of their “colleagues” can conjure up.
It’s a wonder so many young Indie bands strive to find the comfort in branching out and “getting weird.” A Lull doesn’t pretend to know what it’s doing, they simply find their niche without sounding like their (a) trying too hard or (b) falling miserably short. By doing both, they are already ahead of 99% of the young bands out there striving to develop a signature sound in a market liquidated by a bunch of white noise.
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