Track Of The Day BRIGHT ISLANDS
Originally the solo project of the Merseyside singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mike Simms, Liverpool-based indie pop group Bright Islands have expanded into a full five-piece band.
The first fruit from their first self-recorded and mixed studio session, with Todd Tobias on mastering duty, is the new single “Paper Boats”, written by guitarist Liam Dean.
Bright Islands imbues its distinctive chimey, jangly indie-pop-rock style with edgier, downbeat undertones in a song about making plans but never following through with them, viewed through the lens of pretending you never wanted them anyway.
Subtly hopeless and slightly abrasive, the sentimental, intimate and emotionally thorny “Paper Boats” is characterised by clean-cut, striking guitar work, liquid keyboard fills, deft piano nuances and male-female layers that harmonize gracefully, radiating with homespun warmth.
Stirred by fluid, shifting drum beats and daunting, shimmery guitar melodies that echo with rippling, tinkly intensity, to counterpoint earnest, vulnerable male vocals of heartfelt gloom, joined by sweet, wistful female angst, achingly longing amid turbulent cathartic intervals of screechy, ringing distorted swells, smattered with sad piano keys, evoking a deep sense of lingering sorrow and regret.
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