Indra Dunis begins Peaking Lights’ fifth album in a kind of zombie state. “I’m wondering/Where my mind has gone to now,” she breathes slowly on opener “Dreaming Outside.” “Here I am just wandering.” Surrounded by her partner Aaron Coyes’ loping beat, Dunis’ voice floats passively, synth waves bobbing her up and down. Her soak-up-the-world tone persists throughout The Fifth State of Consciousness in songs about staring at the sun, walking alone at night, and “sitting watching time go by.”
Dunis’ meditative aura naturally fits Peaking Lights’ dreamy mix of dub, new wave, and disco. As Coyes layers loops with growing textures, simple tunes morph into enveloping swirls. In that process, familiar sounds are shaped into a unique signature. On their previous album, 2014’s Cosmic Logic, that signature blurred, submerged under styles that drifted toward the generic. But The Fifth State of Consciousness corrects that course, echoing many influences but sounding definitively like Peaking Lights.
A lot of that correction is due to Dunis, whose simple, repetitive verse emboldens the duo’s musical cycles and gives the album a consistent mood. Often she sounds like a friendly hypnotist, calmly coaxing you to open your senses and invite the world in. “Hear the ring/Jangling/Let it sing /And envelop you,” she sings on the reggae-inflected “Coyote Ghost Melodies.” During the angelic “A Phoenix and a Fish,” she extols the rewards of observation (“Everywhere I look I see beauty”); she even celebrates the therapeutic power of smell on the rippling “Sweetness Isn’t Far Away.” On the album’s most beatific tune, “Put Down Your Guns,” her outlook is clear: “Let love come in/And put down your guns/Look at everyone /Love conquers all.”
Such sentiments could sound saccharine were Peaking Lights’ music not infused with many colors. Trace the intersecting loops on any track and you’ll see that a lot happens inside Dunis and Coyes’ bubbling mixes. Two of the best examples are the album’s catchiest tracks, the insistent “Everytime I See the Light” and the retro-tinted “Love Can Move Mountains.” Both establish solid beats and pulsing basslines that never waver, yet the music continually swells. It’s why Peaking Lights’ take on dub is often called psychedelic: its effects hit subconsciously, like a high that kicks in while you were thinking about something else.
The Fifth State of Consciousness isn’t just one big happy trip. As on their best record to date, 2012’s Lucifer, Peaking Lights’ songs get a little darker as this album progresses. Emotionally, “Love Can Move Mountains” is a mixed bag: Dunis tries to listen to and connect with others, but admits that “I’m lost inside/And it’s hard to know/If I can hear your sound.” On “Eclipse of the Heart,” the darkness threatens to take over: “Don’t let the shadow/Cover who you are,” she sings over descending bass and cloudy synths.
Light always wins on Peaking Lights albums, though, and this time the victory comes in a sugar-sweet closer. “Wild Paradise” is so bright and giddy you might think the duo’s drug of choice is laughing gas. “Electric sunset/Fluorescent candy clouds/Sunlight makes the moon come alive,” Dunis hums as glistening tones rise around her like bubbles. At times like this, when the duo seems to breathe helium, they’ve earned the right to indulge. Whatever plane The Fifth State of Consciousness represents, Peaking Lights make it sound like gold at the end of a rainbow.
