It’s hard to knock a band whose members met working at an organic farm and have since rolled up their sleeves to give it a go in the music industry. That is especially true for an act brimming with influences, most of which are readily accessible to indie and alternative rock fans. On Arches, Virginia-based duo Illiterate Light give a nod to styles that include guitar-driven indie rock, kaleidoscopic neo-psychedelia, and harmony-laden folk. What becomes readily apparent is there is a fine line between their self-stylized shape-shifting nature and not having a clear identity. The pair also make some questionable choices, delivering a package that will largely leave listeners wondering what they just heard.
On this, their third effort, Illiterate Light (which features multi-instrumentalists Jeff Gorman, primarily on lead vocals and guitar, and Jake Cochran, mostly on drums and backing vocals), believe they have come to a place where they are no longer worried about comparisons. In discussing their heterogeneity of styles, Gorman said, “Smashing it all together used to feel strange, but now there’s a glue between everything we do. Our fans get it. They care less about genre. All they care about is feeling. And that’s all we care about. Are you alive or not?”
That sentiment is all well and good, but the comparisons abound, and those influences can distract from the overall artistry, assuming any exists. Nearly every song on the nine-track LP finds a reference point (or two). “Dead Nettles” is meant to sound like Superchunk, right? Or is it Mercury Rev? Other influences include Silversun Pickups on “All the Stars are Burning Out”, the Flaming Lips and My Morning Jacket on “Black Holes”, the Black Keys and Queens of the Stone Age on “I Ride Alone”, and Incubus on “No Way Out”. Sure, none of this may have been intentional from the artist’s vantage point, but what results is a band without a defining quality.
The few moments that set Arches apart are not necessarily favorable either. Perhaps most jarring is the record’s centerpiece, “Norfolk Southern”. The opening and oft-repeated robotic cadence, “Round and around and around the clock” (and background “hey” chant, to boot), sounds like a 1990s mashup you never wanted to hear. The song references the train derailments and environmental disaster in East Palestine and Springfield, Ohio, with the lyrics, “Here comes the Norfolk Southern / It’s off the tracks / And heading for you.” It’s clearly intended to be a rallying cry for the downtrodden in Appalachia and otherwise forgotten places in middle America, like Shenandoah and Southwest Virginia. But with those manufactured sounds, they can’t be serious, right?
In addition, the intro to “Payphone” sounds like “Harmonia’s Dream” by the War on Drugs, only with the caffeine jitters. The line “fake tits and Diet Coke” is a questionable choice, especially considering how it serves as the album’s opening proclamation. The track settles into a groove, with kinetic energy made famous by a band like Foals. The only issue is the track attempts to include the driving intensity of Foo Fighters as well, underscoring the issue of how the disparate pieces do not fully mesh.
Inconsistency explains much of the overall gripe with Arches, how individual songs often have something going before being undercut by unnecessary jumps, often in the form of tempo changes. Take “Montauk”, with its Pinback-inspired math rock that eventually leads to an inspired guitar solo, only to be upended by a detached and largely incongruous drum section. In this way, Illiterate Light come across as a band too concerned with punctuating every twist and turn, as opposed to just letting the hook, the melody, or sophisticated instrumentation stand on its own. Each calculated misstep reminds one of a band like Secret Machines, who were so concerned with matching their idols that they never discovered their own voice.
If Illiterate Light are primarily concerned with creating feeling, as they suggest, it ends up being a rare occurrence. The album closer, “Blood Lines”, stands as a metaphor for the brotherhood the two have formed in this venture. Even if visions of tears falling from the sky, hitting the bottle early in the day, and carelessly covering our bodies with tattoos sound somewhat generic, it is the closest thing to authenticity listeners will find here.
With the right direction, those positive qualities could be honed into something meaningful. At the very least, Illiterate Light would be wise to ignore certain impulses concerned with image in favor of what might naturally set them apart.