It's been six years since the release of Full Negative (or) Breaks, the last album of new material from Bright, and the hiatus seems to have done little harm to the improvisational duo's finely-textured ambient rock. On the contrary, Bells Break Their Towers might be Bright's craftiest invention yet, as they circle outward to further incorporate layered vocals, narcotic Krautrock repetitions, and cagey post-Slint guitar dynamics into their explorative space-rock. And though on initial pass their orbit may appear to take a rather too familiar post-rock trajectory, here Bright have sufficiently broadened their scope to encompass some lovely and genuinely alien terrain.
The core of the group remains guitarist/vocalist Mark Dwinell and multi-instrumentalist Joe Labrecque, but on Bells Break Their Towers the instrumental line-up expands and contracts from track to track as necessary, ranging from the basic duo up to a sextet. This fluidity is somewhat invisible, however, as on these eight pieces Bright make such extensive use of multi-tracking, particularly on Dwinell's vocals, that rarely does the music feature fewer than three instruments at once. So while these tracks have their origins in spontaneous composition, they've also clearly been pored over meticulously in the studio, an approach that sacrifices some of the free particle energy of their earlier recordings in exchange for a balanced clarity and more vigilant celestial navigation.
Bright's increased melodic concision is immediately evident on the opening "Manifest Harmony", which features a torrent of Dwinell's interlocking vocal streams within a churning eddy of guitar and keyboard. On this track, and other more pop-centric cuts like the endlessly chiming "Receiver", his boyish vocals can often be a dead ringer for those of Rob Crow, leaving these songs sounding like a trippier, more cosmically-inclined version of Pinback-- an equation certainly not without its merits. Dwinell's unblemished vocals also fit perfectly into the tranquil currents of "Flood," a trio piece featuring three acoustic guitars exquisitely set into a continually renewing mantra-like dialogue.
Acoustic guitar also figures prominently into the 12-minute "An Ear Out", one of this set's several extended instrumental transmissions. With its serpentine, quicksilver guitar and patiently unspooling rhythms, this track could be mistaken for a product of the Aerial M/Tortoise/For Carnation axis, but Lebrecque's vigorous acoustic strums and resourceful percussion give the piece a regenerative pull uniquely its own. Even more impressive is the equally-long title track, which adds two basses and Michael Torres' violin to instigate a disorienting, multi-layered drone worthy of experimental acts like Vibracathedral Orchestra, with Bright's swirling winds kicking up enough dust to obscure the rush of the oncoming stars.
