Artist: Lightning Dust
Album: Lightning Dust
Label: Jagjaguwar
Year: 2007
Reviewed by: Woodstock Slim

Having listened to nothing else but this and the new Raz Ohara and the Odd Orchestra, which in some strange way sounds like they set out with the same idea and accomplished very similar results too. Lightning Dust has Indie qualities even a bit of Goth but not in an obvious way. Stuff Bauhaus would be doing now if they'd survived the nineties. And if you like David Surkamp even half as much as I do, you will realise that Amber sounds just enough like him to have memories stream back of digging for gold and writing songs for sweetheart Julia from the Pavlov's Dog days and by the way where the hell did my Pampered Menial record disappear to anyhow?
The oddest song on this album is a short ditty called "Wind me up" Hell I don't even know what they were thinking when you slipped this into the album line-up but it creates a false start for
the next track "Take me back" Flippen hell! My dogs ran and sat in their "Thunder corner" next to our bed where they hide when the weather is stormy round the Cape. Needless to say this team of Amber Webber and Joshua Wells have been playing together for many years as part of Black Mountain. They've toured the world and have played impenetrable space-rock to the unlikeliest of audiences. With an abundance of creative energy to spare, the two decided to start a separate project together, that they named Lightning Dust.
Here and there you can hear a bit of Danbert Nobacon seeping through but its really just the churning energy below the volcano of emerging sound of the new wave. A serious kind of
Twang. A birthing canal of Melancholy and a rebirth of the macabre. There is nothing here out of the ordinary 'cept all the crap ingredients big record companies add to make it sell has been left out. Leaving us essentially with truly flippen awesome music and lyrics.
This is hypnotic stuff, man... I think the the Goths have a new princess in Webber and hell... is she beautiful! And I believe this is only a start for her, next step... I see her whimsically attempting Kate Bush's legendary blend of sweet and dark. There are no mistakes and all the tracks are perfect. I like a bit of rubbish lo-fi so... this album goes beyond... just watch how it swallows you whole...

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