Brighter Later
Melbourne outfit Brighter Later have appeared, fully formed, as a hauntingly original new voice in Australian music. The project of frontwoman and songwriter Jaye Kranz and collaborators, the debut The Wolves drew rapt praise here and overseas for its “dreamy brilliance”(HCM) and half-lit intimacy.
Jaye self-produced the album in her home, an old bluestone church in Melbourne’s west. Being a neophyte to engineering had its challenges, but it also allowed her a certain amount of freedom: “One of the advantages was not even having a rule book to throw out,” Kranz says. She emerged with an album that doesn’t sound like a self-produced record any more than it sounds like a debut. It’s an intoxicating, enveloping piece of music - "an elegantly arranged universe .. with carefully laid hooks working slow magic” (Rolling Stone).
Band members include bass player Virginia Bott, programmer Patrick Dunn, and drummer Sean Albers, with the full live line-up expanding to include Shane O’Mara, Simon Bailey (Pony Face), Daniel Marsh and Cameron Potts (Montero, Ninety-Nine).
The LP was named Album Of The Week by Triple R and PBS FM and earnt Kranz a nomination for the prestigious Australian Music Prize (AMP), and Best Emerging Artist in the 2013 The Age/Music Victoria Awards.
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Their sound doesn’t lend itself to easy categorisations. It has certain musical antecedents — the hazy swoon of Mazzy Star, the breathy spell of early Cat Power, the haunting, narcotic beauty of Low, “an earthier Sigur Ros” (Weekly Review), even “the gentler side of The Velvet Underground” (OrangePress) — but it sits firmly in its own world. Though only one album in, Brighter Later have found a sound that is indelibly theirs: expansive, cinematic and aching in equal measure. They manage to leave none of this behind when they take to the stage. “On record, the sensuality of the songs, the spectral soundscape and transcendent world generated is one thing, but attempting to relay the sentiment live, well, suffice to say, that’s another. Yet they achieve it, time and time again.” (Rhythms Magazine)
“A solid and bewitching set, The Wolves is a beautiful dreamy collection of indie-pop. [Kranz] has one of the most peculiar and most beautiful voices in Australian music. It is reminiscent of Silversun Pickups’ singer Brian Aubert, and enhances every song on The Wolves to a dreamlike status.. [ … ] Add in a soft chanted opening melody, a slow steady drum beat, and harmonious hushed choruses and you have the perfect entry into Brighter Later’s mysterious and enchanting world.” — Al Newstead, Tone Deaf
"This debut collection by Melbourne's Brighter Later could be the pencil sketches of a masterpiece.. {The Wolves'] overwhelming organic beauty means this music could drift into the untouched environment of a distant wilderness and not disturb a moment of peace. But if it did that, we would never get to hear it." 4/5 Chris Martin, Sydney Morning Herald
