Tuesday 22 March 2022

ALBUM REVIEW: 40 Watt Sun, "Perfect Light"

By: Richard Maw
 
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 21/01/2022
Label: Svart Records



 

“Perfect Light” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Reveal
2). Behind My Eyes
3). Until
4). Colours
5). The Spaces in Between
6). Raise Me Up
7). A Thousand Miles
8). Closure

The Review:

40 Watt Sun have made quite a lovely record here. Not the standard opening for a review on THE SLUDGELORD, but there you go. This is acoustic melancholia. Main man Patrick Walker is ably assisted by a few others- notably Roland Scriver of London doomsters Serpent Venom- but really this is his vision and these are his songs.

There are eight tracks here and they are long. They are mellow. They are sombre. There is only one piece below five minutes and everything else runs well beyond that with sparse arrangements, understated vocals, and some excellent accompanying instrumentation (drums, strings, piano etc.).

To be clear this is not a metal album at all- it is emotionally heavy, not necessarily musically heavy. Going through individual tracks here seems a little redundant- this is a mood piece, and I can't really pick stand outs amongst what is uniformly excellent.

If you fancy a change of pace and fancy digging a little deeper into the human condition, perhaps with a good bottle of whisky, then this is absolutely an album to check out. If you are looking for reference points, I'd say this is somewhere between a sparse Nick Cave record and a Roy Harper one; the folk-ish sounds and references fit, but this its own beast. It's lovingly crafted and very moving.

“Perfect Light” is available HERE

Band info: bandcamp || facebook