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proudly presents
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Brighter - Singles 1989-1992
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Artist: Brighter
Album: Singles 1989-1992
Company: Matinee Recordings
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Rel. Date : 11/25/2003 Streetdate : 09/00/2003
Ripper : team pyt Supplier : team pyt
Genre : Indie Style : Indie
Quality : 192kbps / 44.1kHz Mode : Joint-Stereo
Grabber : EAC Encoder : lame
Songs : 15 Playtime : 53:30 min
Size : 73,6 MB
Url : http://www.indiepages.com/matinee
Type : Album Source : CDDA
Language : English
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Highly anticipated collection of singles previously released
on the legendary English pop label Sarah Records. A trio of
Alison Cousens, Keris Howard and Alex Sharkey, Brighter was a
beloved band equally comfortable creating introspective and
poignant songs (Inside Out, So You Said, Never Ever) and
jangly pop hits (Does Love Last Forever, Poppy Day, I Don't
Think it Matters). The songs all possessed the signature
Brighter elements: beautifully strummed guitars, gorgeous
melodies, and heartfelt, intelligent lyrics. Between 1989 and
1992, the band released three brilliant 7" EPs ("Around the
World in Eighty Days", "Noah's Ark", and "Half-hearted") and
one 10"/CDEP ("Disney") for Sarah which are collected here in
their entirety. Long out of print and highly sought after,
these 15 songs are available again (and for the first time on
CD for the majority) on this beautiful collection. Brighter
disbanded in 1993, leaving a devoted legion of fans
heartbroken until band members reemerged in recent pop
outfits Harper Lee, Pinkie, Trembling Blue Stars and Fosca.
Housed in a deluxe digipak with vintage Brighter photos,
"Singles 1989-1992" is a document of what came before these
distinguished bands and an essential release for any serious
student of indiepop.
Reviews:
with brighter, of course, it's personal... so. you forsake
f.c. barτa in the cup-winners' cup final to go and see
brighter play in then-exotic london, and by the end of their
set a band you started off merely rather liking have become
your new favourite group and you and a not insignificant
number of your anorak-clad c⌠terie have whispered,
near-secret and avowedly platonic crushes on all three of
them: the bespectacled, becoming singer keris, the
twinkly-eyed bass player alex and the shy-as-you like
guitarist alison, the latter's head bowed and hidden by her
generous fringe. and before you know it there are scrawled
lyrics from "noah's ark" in your exercise book and on your
school desk, "i don't think it matters" ricocheting around
your head while you reel, dizzy with altitude, from
clambering up helvellyn, and you're getting told off for
blu-tacking the insert from "around the world in 80 days" to
your newly-decorated bedroom wall (incidentally, that insert
may well be the gorgeous sleeve of this retrospective,
pictured above). and then you find yourself, in a weak
moment, reduced to tears by "tinsel heart"; you later recoil
when richard waaah! tells you it's actually all about sex.
yet for all that, looking back, it's hard to translate into
our indelicate patois quite why brighter's music meant so
much. when you're young you accept the alchemy of your
musical heroes and heroines as a gloriously affirmatory fact
of life, rarely stopping to analyse one instrument against
another or even pausing to reflect whether or not the words
are saying exactly what you've decided they're saying. this,
is, of course, the only sensible way to absorb music, just as
it is to interpret the world around you. when you're a
teenager, favourite bands provide you with succour, purpose,
comfort and - perhaps most of important of all - (remember
all your badges and t-shhirts ?) identity. you rarely pause
to reason why. away from our self-indulgence, all that
history records with certainty is that in each of the four
calendar years 1989 to 1992, brighter released an ep (three
sevens and a ten) on bristol's ⁿber-mervilleux sarah records.
this album compiles those eps, starting with the rough dusky
charm of "around the world in 80 days" and its orange
duckpond sleeve. "inside out", which begins that ep, is in so
many ways brighter epitomised, a percussion-free loop of
mannered guitars over which keris's voice glides, uncertain
and hesitant, trying to convince himself "to get up off the
floor"; recalling the barbs as "she told me to act my age";
still in the wishing haze where "i don't even know your
name". even listening to it now, it's remarkable for its
breathless, nervous selfconsciousness, laying bare the sound
of a boy trying to map out his place in the world. after
"tinsel heart" then drives imploringly soulwards ("in this
stinking little country"... "they want to nail you to the
floor"... "don't you ever let them win" - themes to be
repeated even more forcefully in later releases), the title
track glitters with lyrical preciousness ("and when i saw
her... i nearly fell over"), its careful chords merely
teasing until its slinky repeated guitar phrase is anchored
by the drum machine into a perfectly-weighted outro: and the
cascading closing track "things will get better" was even
covered by our mates' band in essex, presumably rather
perplexing the goth-inclined punters at the pink toothbrush
in rayleigh who would have been more used to endless touring
from the likes of fields of the nephilim... resuming the
grand literary theme (later to be pursued with the creation
of harper lee, although that's another story) with the
mini-epic "noah's ark", the second ep also provided the
satisfying spring in the step of the poppier, melody-filled
"i don't think it matters" and "does love last forever ?" but
was nothing more than a hint at what was to come. for the
third ep, "half-hearted", co-opted the two-minute jangle and
fake-brass of "poppy day" from their live set and the
taunting, shimmering title track - a blueprint for the
self-critical anguish later resurrected by keris and alex in
hal's "i wish i hadn't said that" - with the landmark "so you
said", which builds unashamedly through a tramway-style
backbeat into a many-layered thing of beauty. "what happened
to the girl / she used to have a soul / but you get a good
price for those". then, slowly, gorgeously, "so you said"
fades away, keris murmuring home truths such as "i barely
recognise you now" while the interweaving melody lines soar
and encircle like vultures overhead, ready to swoop down and
drag you to recue the stylus. just hearing it again pricks
memories of playing it to a roomful of students the evening i
bought it - one of them fell in love with brighter that night
too. consequently, if you'd told me in '91 that brighter were
ever going to top "so you said", i'd have (politely) laughed
in your face, but the insane re-election of the conservative
government the next year (nothing breaks young people's
hearts like telling them lies) was followed by the "disney"
10" that not only boasted a title to put walt's estate's
lawyers on standby, but also apparently snatched the
much-coveted catalogue number sarah 69 from the clutches of a
certain heavenly. more relevantly, in both "hope springs
eternal", a warm-up for hal's "election day" which we will
never believe is anything other than the inquest into the
cackling reactionary laughter of major john's triumph, and
the massive, massive lead track "killjoy" (a tour de force
exhibiting real confidence, once previewed unforgettably in
the rather unlikely confines of writtle agricultural
college), brighter produced maybe their two signature tunes,
showing off a sound that had grown up a little more, yet was
still hewn from the increasingly seductive blend of the
personal and the political. indeed, the last 40 seconds of
"hope..." which pursue keris' plaintive observation "how
times change", are probably my favourite 40 seconds of music
ever, only rivalled at the time of writing by the frantic,
frazzled emotion at the end of "anyone can make a mistake"
and "he gets me so hard". as we once discussed with some
bloke (who turned out to be sarah apparatchik and
angel-voiced future orlando frontman tim chipping) at one of
the occasional sarah nights that came to the jericho tavern
around that time, "disney" was an ep that was as close as a
pop group can ever come to writing its own epitaph - not just
with its central themes of self-doubt and fragmentation ("am
i just betraying myself... or has my fight just gone ?") but,
to ram the point home, the fact that the last two tracks on
that ep, and this cd, are the short, sweet and brittle "never
ever" (with its cheery "goodbye" chorus) and the even more
obvious "end", which contents itself with reminding us "maybe
this could be the start / of bedsit days and lonely hearts".
and so it came to pass that we found ourselves at the bull &
gate (where else ?) in kentish town one night not long enough
afterwards, watching in muted awe as brighter played their
last ever gig, even emerging from their shells sufficiently
to provide two encores. and us still murmuring, like keris in
"never ever", "please don't leave". but just to have been
there, frankly, was very heaven. our only reservation, and
it's an inevitable moan coming from anally retentive,
formerly floppy-fringed indie snobs and completists such
ourselves, is the absence of all the other wonderful material
that the world still SO deserves to hear, from the seminal
"don't remember" and "wallflower" (the latter of which we
must confess to never having heard in recorded form) through
"airhead" and "looks like rain" to the poptabulous "next
summer" with its godlike "things will be brighter" line which
in the way it is sung still never fails to send our heads
fair spinning into the wild blue yonder of the ether many
fathoms above south london. it is true that including early
or rare stuff can often disrupt the flow of a compilation,
especially when you're reduced to remastering off
played-to-smithereens flexidiscs, but even so our own hope
springs eternal that "singles 1989-1992" will re-establish
brighter's flame sufficiently to make a future further
retrospective at least a possibility. in the meantime get
this compact disc (and beg, steal or borrow to get a copy of
their 8-track sarah mini-lp "laurel", which showcases further
standards like "frostbite", "maybe", "ocean sky" and the
stomach churning, tear jerking, superlative defying,
vocabulary transcending ballad to end them all, "christmas")
and you will have the power supreme. um, since i first fell
in love with brighter, so much has happened in my life which
- thanks to various judicious redrafts of this review - i
shall neither bore yourselves or myself with. i've left
battalions of crushes, obsessions and temporary distractions
way behind, distractions to whom brighter or their admirable
phalanx of contemporaries were invariably the soundtrack. yet
in contrast i always suspected that brighter were for life,
not just for "christmas". fair play to matinΘe for indulging
the likes of us with this release, and much more importantly
for dusting off this particular legend for exposure to a new
and thankful generation of music lovers. so, brighter. i
guess they're unimportant to you. but they're everything to
me. --In Love With These Times
Of course it goes without saying that Brighter are far too
legendary in indie pop circles for the likes of johnny come
latelys like tasty to try and praise them to skies.
But...but...it's so hard not to. If these songs weren't the
soundtrack to your early twenties - that time of life when
you realise that all the pissing about you did when you were
eighteen and thought you'd live forever was over - then,
quite frankly you missed out. Unless you're into the Harper
Lee and Pinkie that is. For those not in the know, the
Brighter sound was one of the most intimate indie pop you'll
probably ever hear. Keris Howard, Alison Cousens and Alex
Sharkey made only a very few bittersweet tunes that turned
many a shy boy and girl from bedsit casualties onto something
altogether more worthwhile. Y'see in an era when it was
considered fucking ace for the Senseless Things to crash into
the charts at number 35, Brighter were busy releasing a
clutch of records on Sarah that were a godsend for those not
down with baggy or fannying around in a plaid shirt
pretending that Nirvana weren't crap heavy metal arseholes.
Hymns of disaffection, such as 'Inside Out', 'Noah's Ark' and
'I Don't Think It Matters' said a lot more about our lives
than a dribbly Manc, and....a smack head from Seattle. And
all, yes ALL of Brighter's recorded work is collected
together here, in another awesome Matinee package. This is
the sound of many years ago now, but don't let anyone tell
you that it isn't relevant. After all, you should always keep
in touch with your friends. --Tasty
Ah, Brighter. If you needed melancholy, intimate, gently
heartbroken indie pop to keep you company as you curled up
under your blankets and felt blue, they would never let you
down. Their brief catalog is sad and blue from start to
finish. An apt comparison would have to be the Field Mice if
you took away any glimmer of happiness and that band's
willingness to experiment. Brighter were mostly content to
stay within the bounds of the sound they sketched out on
their first release: ringing guitars, drum machine, melodic
bass, and above all Keris Howard's almost painfully personal
lyrics and bedsit perfect voice. MatinΘe have done indie kids
everywhere a big favor by rounding up the band's three
singles and one 10" EP they recorded for Sarah between 1989
and 1992. (The group also released two flexi-discs that sadly
don't appear.) Each song is a steady stream of sadness, but
the standout songs are the epic "Noah's Ark," the almost
peppy "I Don't Think It Matters," and their musically
sunniest song, "Poppy Day," which ironically boasts the
lyrics "The sun rarely shines without you." You know from the
resignation in his voice that the sun hadn't shone on Howard
for quite a while. Oh well, his sadness is indie pop fans'
gladness, and this collection brings a feeling of warm
nostalgia for the old-timers who lived through it and a
feeling of happy discovery for those who enjoy the bands that
Brighter influenced (like most of MatinΘe's early-2000s
roster, especially Keris Howard's group Harper Lee). 2002
brought MatinΘe's great Razorcuts retrospective, and then
2003 brought this superb collection, making you wonder what
2004 would bring. Maybe an Orchids box set? A Harvey Williams
retrospective? Once again MatinΘe proves itself to be just
about the best pal an indie kid could have. --All Music
Guide
Brighter es una de las mßs suculentas apuestas que hizo Sarah
Records en su momento. Durante varios a±os nos regalaron su
pop especial, ba±ado en sonidos britßnicos de inicios de los
noventa ambientados en espacios hermosos, que escondφan
tambiΘn la amargura de corazones rotos. DespuΘs de diez a±os,
la gente de MatinΘe Recordings ha creφdo que era el momento
id≤neo para hacerle un homenaje, recopilando cada uno de sus
singles en un solo compacto. Por eso tenemos ante nosotros
algunos de los mejores y mßs bellos temas, como podrφan ser
"Things Will get better", "Does love last forever?", "Poppy
Day" o "British Summertime", una joya, creados por este joven
trφo. Pudiendo deleitarnos de nuevo con la voz de Alex
Sharkey, los susurros de Alison Cousens, y los
acompa±amientos de Keris Howard, en un ßlbum que contiene
quince cortes que harßn las delicias del mßs escΘptico. Es
como un billete al pasado pero con la mente enclavada en el
presente. Con este Singles 1989-1992 redescubrirßs a una de
esas bandas inglesas que siempre se han mantenido al margen
del gran reconocimiento p·blico, pero que gracias a ello han
podido resguardar todo su carisma y todo su estilo, creando
su propia historia dentro del panorama musical no
convencional. Y de paso, como si de un trabajo arqueol≤gico
se tratara, recuperaremos los cimientos de la m·sica
independiente internacional en toda su esencia, en todo su
esplendor, cuando todavφa quedaba mucho camino por recorrer,
cuando todo era nuevo y sorprendente y mßgico, algo un poco
mßs inocente. --Popchild
Enjoy!
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01. [04:03] Inside Out
02. [03:24] Tinsel Heart
03. [04:25] Around The World In 80 Days
04. [03:52] Things Will Get Better
05. [05:07] Noah's Ark
06. [03:01] I Don't Think It Matters
07. [02:32] Does Love Last Forever
08. [02:07] Poppy Day
09. [02:44] Half-Hearted
10. [05:24] So You Said
11. [04:14] Killjoy
12. [02:40] British Summertime
13. [04:41] Hope Springs Eternal
14. [02:45] Never Ever
15. [02:31] End
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53:30 min
73,6 MB
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