The complex layers that build over the unpretentious guitar riff, and the bubbling drums all add to the pure fun and love that the singing expresses. Just like a new relationship, tension is expertly built, with quick releases from the drums roaring in, only to disappear like apparitions of the mind. The slow and vibrato-filled synths skilfully contrast with the building excitement, only to end with a quick release, and the fading note into the abyss. Lightning Dust knows what the listener wants to hear, and they tease us cleverly.

The Term “indie” has essentially replaced the word “cool” in the past five years, in terms of over-saturation to the point where it loses all meaning. Where it used to be a common abbreviation for independent, indie is now used to describe anything thing from experimental, off the wall zaniness to simple d.i.y musicians trying to get their name out. For me, I’ve strived to stop using the term, but it gets pretty hard when I describe my friends music. Conversations would go like this…

Friend: Hey, what are you doing tonight?

Me: Uhh, going to friend’s show!

Friend: Cool! What kind of music do they play?

Me: It’s kind of like break-beat-dub-house-ital-noise-experimental-no-wave-dance music?

Friend: *click*

So while indie is a huge timesaver in terms of describing music, it is flawed in its simplicity. You want to clearly let someone know what kind of music they might be listening to, but you don’t want to bog them down with labels and genre. It’s as if there auto-bar-of-musical-standards and they adjust to what the person who is showing you the music is saying. If you say, “…like the Pixies.” The bar probably goes way up, but if you regurgitate what I wrote earlier, the bar is at the bottom of the barrel. So what is indie for me?

The composer Nico Muhly said it best. “…indie… [music]…or whatever the <f**k> you want to call it is the ability of the artist to represent, through recordings and live shows, an internal artistic universe.”