Bright Light, Bright Light - A tropical sunset praising the heavens

*****

A star shines bright in the church tonight / A beautiful evening, in a beautiful place

Bright Light, Bright Light ***** There is a strange sense of beautiful irony about Bright Light, Bright Light (Aka Rod Thomas) playing a special solo piano show in St. Pancras, Old Church in London, wearing pink trousers and a tropical patterned jacket... which has no right to look so fabulously stylish on him as it does.  He jokes that he has never seen so many gays together in a church.

The Neo-Classical Greek architecture of St. Pancras, Old Church surely inspires visions of Pan frolicking half naked in meadows more than austere, shivering, dowdy Christians solemnly listening to a sermon on a rainy Sunday morning. This is a temple to the muses Melpomene and Euterpe with the last vestige of Polyhymnia illuminating the sanctuary and casting an air of tranquillity... at least this is what it became. 

You could hear a pin drop, a can of cider being opened, and the rude intrusions of a sound from a Japanese compact camera sounding a quirky little ditty as the shutter button was pressed, (listen out for it on the interlude tracks on the live recording of the show). Every note on the keyboard reverberated with it’s own potency and brief breath of life, and each vocal note sounded bright. 

We all joined in worship of a vocal purity singing of loves lost and found... at least that is a lot of what I thought a lot of Rob’s song’s were about, but I had a delightful surprise. His words found now meaning, as he talked about the inspirations for his music and those that had most inspired and helped him in a series of intimate interludes. Some of his older songs started to take on a dimension of Murakarmi-esque, (author Norwegian Wood) bizarreness.

This quirkiness has started to shine through more of his most recent releases. In Choreography he experiments with writing songs inspired by his favourite films. The song ‘Symmetry Of Two Hearts’ is based on Kim Catterall’s dance scene in the movie Mannequin, which he played both dramatically and beautifully. He has very recently released a great EP 'Cinematography 2' with a brilliant cover of the theme tune of the 90's children's cartoon 'The Raccoons' called 'Run with Me'. While it evokes great memories of my own childhood, I was also a fan of the show, it is a strange type of genius and daring to cover it; and with sax!! It’s a brilliant song, but sadly didn’t make the set list of this evening’s show.  

He joked about ‘All in the Name’ from 'Choreography' being ‘the hit’, which he didn’t play either.  While the comment was self-effacing he has had quite a number of tracks listed in the US Billboard, so the comment isn’t quite true. But, thinking about it it’s hard to understand why he hasn’t had more big ‘hits’ with such an amazing catalogue, that few other artists could boast of. Certainly Elton John must recognize that spark of genius to have wanted to work with him. It makes me wonder if a lot of people don’t quite get him and his slightly surreal edge, or perhaps he has pitched himself as a little too niche for most.

I love that Bright Light x2 sound is anchored more to the 80’s.  So many Pop acts today are either what I would describe as ‘lollypop’ (insipidly sweet), or are a hybrid child of Skrillex and RnB or they sound something like Hipster Indie Folk. 'Love (Part 2)' sounds great and dramatic, perfect for a Piano solo show. It was one of my favourite songs of the show.  It’s similar to what he did on the brilliant 'Me me believe in Hope - Blueprints' album.

His piano accompaniments are spot on. A combination of a perfect sense of timing and he uses space, pauses and absence to create a minimal yet rich and intricate sound.  It helps to build a bigger sense of drama and match the music to the performance space.  It is the musical equivalent of negative space in art.  ‘Careful Whisper’... his tribute to George Michael was delivered in just the right level of emotion, and ‘An Open Heart’ was the perfect track to end on.

It was a very special show, and perhaps the one I have enjoyed the most to date apart from Bright Light Bright Light’s set at Heaven last year, where he wore the most amazing trousers.  Anyway, now he spends most of his time in States it feels like a rare treat to hear him play.  It was also very cool to hear of his love of the drink ‘lilt’, which sort of matched in with the theme of the jacket. It injected a light hearted humour to what is generally quite a dark backdrop of terrorism and political uncertainty hanging over London at the moment.  As lilt is unavailable in the US I am hoping it may give him a good reason to come back soon. 

If you are now feeling like you missed out on this show you can download an MP3 recording from Bright light, Bright light’s bandcamp page.