Auburn Lull have proven surprisingly hard to forget. Minor members of Michigan's minor space rock scene-- think Burnt Hair Records, Windy and Carl, Mahogany; call it suburbgaze-- the Lansing quartet are now on their fourth Darla release: a reissued 1999 debut, a rarities comp, and two proper full-lengths. And like the copy of Alone I Admire I copped so many years ago in one of those same Michigan suburbs, Begin Civil Twilight reminds of a time when I very nearly bought a Landing record every time I entered a record store and when I actually did buy a used Flying Saucer Attack album every time I entered a record store. Auburn Lull sell a particularly dense, nurtured form of dream-pop that acts as an admirably neutral standard for a genre and scene whose survival instincts have proven cockroach-like.
Auburn Lull sport a perfectly shoegaze-y name-- well, perfectly American anyway, as those E'd-up cross-pond Brits wouldn't be caught dead in something so drearily Midwestern-- but even that genre would imply too much grit: Begin Civil Twilight takes far more cues from ambient or even new age music. Guitarist/vocalist Sean Heenan captains the band with a sadistically slow metronome; drummer Jason Wiesinger possesses either otherworldly patience or mountains of sedatives. Along with guitarists/bassists Jason Kolb and Eli Wekenman they resist any and all temptation to create friction or to amass tension. Apply all standard music-critic buzzwords to the guitars: float, drift, languish, glide. Drum patterns are whisked away like accumulated rain from a windshield.
Compared to their peers, Auburn Lull are relatively less willing to blur their sounds-- guitars and keyboards mostly meld, but there are traceable lines drawn between the vocals, bass, and drums. The difference seems to arise less out of a desire to produce proper pop music than to not let Heenan's understated delivery and actual melodies go to waste. Opener "Light Through the Canopy" peels away to reveal a heavily reverberated Heenan worming his way through a contoured melody: "This is how it's supposed to go," he claims, light/lite guitars wearing threadbare behind him in confirmation. "Broken Heroes", Twilight's most overt pop stab, relies on little more than intermittent bass gurgles during the verse, allowing Heenan and wife Elsa room to mourn in unison. "November's Long Shadows" (stereotypical song title alert level: Orange) features a curlicue lead guitar that cuts through the ever-present sheen and gives the song a vague college-rock feel. "Coasts", ironically, is the closest Twilight comes to propulsion, dancing with a skittish high-hat before stumbling into a jog, little guitar bends and stabs darting in and out of a tastefully martial drum pattern.
While the band's lack of saturation has heretofore worked to its advantage, with each successive release Auburn Lull sound less like squirreled-away torch-guarders and more like a veteran group of studio wizards retracing their steps very, very, very slowly. Twilight contains plenty of Auburn Lull autopilot: little tone poems with vague clips of dialogue ("Geneva"), four and five minute swaths of effected guitar ("Civil Twilight"), or blank soundscapes that serve only as cots for pretty acoustic noodling ("Stanfield Echo" and, most egregiously, the untitled nine-minute closer). These are not offensive compositions, just extraneous ones that seem like dead weight for a band three albums in and capable of lovingly muted pop. Auburn Lull remain charmingly unswayed by time; hearts grow fonder, sure, but metal rusts and shelves dust over, too.
