To call Kilowatthours' sound 'lush', as many have, is like poking holes in a refrigerator box, crawling inside and calling it a planetarium. Their shoegazing emo (shoe-mo?) goes far with basic instruments: on their second full-length, The Bright Side, their texture-focused mix of lo-fi keyboards and smearing guitars is rich, but more rough and spontaneous than polished and perfected.
The band's latest line-up includes Chris Renn on guitar and barely audible, somewhat weak vocals; Ben Lord on drums; and Dan Benningfield on keyboards and piano. Thanks in part to producer Trevor Kampmann (aka hollAnd), the recording sounds loose even though considerable work must have gone into the arrangements. Renn and Lord lumber with effective repetitiveness while Benningfield layers in color-- from the vibrant, skyward-looking organ on "Welcome to Orlando" to the splurting synths on "Completely Normal".
Transcendent at one turn and slogging drearily the next, Kilowatthours have impressive dynamics. If there's one thing they've nailed, it's going from quiet to loud to quiet again with the proper sense of drama. On "Almost Airtight", the album's most powerful track, the luminous intro sets up Renn and ex-member Ryan Compton to go supernova through the power-chord-bedecked bridge; then they shift down to quiet again, a few idle string plucks walking us into a sparse, jagged outro. And the concise instrumental "Dancers and Acrobats" rolls through a simple, pretty keyboard riff and Lord's intermittent bashing.
But for all the style, The Bright Side falls short on substance. There's a lack of tautness and hookiness to the material that makes it bleed together; few of the pieces aim higher than 'likeable'. Though most of the tracks have vocals, Renn's voice is buried by the mix. And while this kind of indistinct singing may be a legitimate shoe-mo tactic, it doesn't make the album any stronger.
The subtle melodies only occasionally break out of the clouds, and the shambling performance that sounds so fresh on the 'big' numbers can turn into sludge on the slower ones; and with so many rich instrumentals, quaint songs like "The Only Good Thing About Pollution" just drift off into space. Which is a shame, because stronger writing could have made this a gripping record, and not just a gorgeous one.
