a 'goodbye brighter' piece

found this, to my great surprise, in the boxes from the move - dates from early 1994, i guess. note no editing out of all the embarrassing bits, including the wrong words, the wrong adjectives, the cringeworthy opening, and attributing entirely the wrong song title to one of my favourite songs. i was quite intrigued to find that a number of these memories were just as vivid when writing brighter reissue reviews many yrs later...

"I was talking to Tim Chippington (Orlando, Waccamole, Timbertoes, namedrop, namedrop) about Brighter's last EP, 1992's piquant "Disney"; we were lamenting the fact how it sounded like an epitaph. The closing tracks were "Never Ever" (chorus: "Goodbye, goodbye...") and the gorgeous "End", in which the melodies scuttle obliquely behind Keris Howard's evocative singing: "Maybe this could be the end..."

Brighter were hardly the longest lived or highest profile band, but every little thing they did was... well, magical. Consisting of a series of drum machines, plus Keris (words and guitars), Alison (guitar and Eric Cantona T-shirt) and Alex (bass and boyish features), they emerged from Sussex with "Around The World In Eighty Days", a lush, slow, deeply dreamy EP compared in the press to the Mary Chain and the Cocteaus, but probably baring closer comparison at the time to the gentler moods of labelmates the Field Mice or St. Christopher.

But with Brighter, there was such a sense of personal politics, of justified world weariness... a thread running through thier early torch song "Tinsel Heart", with its evocation of, "this stinking little country", the beautiful "Christmas", still my favourite ever song, and the overpowering "Poppy day", which mourned the passing over of purity ("she used to have a soul. but you get a good price for those"). And all the time the band were musically maturing.

"Noah's Ark" was "Around The World" part two, a similarly flawless guitar-strewn exercise in soft whispers and melancholy. Not until 1991's "Laurel" did the music start to breathe, freed by slight arrangements, an almost total absence of percussion, and touches of keyboard on "Frostbite" and "Summer Becomes Winter". The lyrics remained simplistic metaphors on both love and life, and this set up the brilliant final EP. Opening with "Killjoy", a typically bitter, winding guitar-picking anthem, it peaked with "Hope Springs Eternal", which will forever to me ring with the disappointment of the last election. "Has our fight just gone ?" - another song about giving in.

I saw them first in May 1991, supporting the Orchids and the Hit Parade at the Islington Powerhaus. They were awesome, in an unassuming, self-absorbed kind of way: even a version of Depeche Mode's "I Just Can't Get Enough" seemed to fit perfectly into their gossamer-gentle scheme of things. It was, pathetically and frighteningly, like love at first sight. Subsequent gigs in Oxford and Bristol demonstrated an alarming inability to break out from their on-stage insularity, but my correspondents from the South East assured me that they tore the house down in a bizarre appearance in front of the assorted hooded tops at Writtle Agricultural College.

They played their last ever show at the Bull and Gate, Kentish Town, in front of an encouraging and appreciative hardcore audience. They broke free at last from the confines of shyness to the tune of a fine, swashbuckling set and two encores. They may not be missed by the music press, but that's why those of us who've thrilled to and been lulled by them have to put the record straight."

i listened to brighter again this morning. now, at least as much as in 1994, they are still of the utmost importance. what is so pleasing, in 2008, is not being remotely alone in this.