click to enlarge - Courtesy
- Luminous Crush, Farewell to the Rainbow Cattle Company
(Self-released, digital)
Luminous Crush are a curious case. The duo is made up of two talented, accomplished musicians, Laura Molinelli and Bay Campbell, who hit the scene with 2016's Lumina, a masterpiece of bedroom-produced dream pop. For all the assurance of their debut, Molinelli and Campbell never really inhabited that space again, only occasionally revisiting it over the course of their next three records as folk and alt-country vibes took the central place in their sound.
Which leads us to Farewell to the Rainbow Cattle Company, perhaps Luminous Crush's most rural-sounding collection of tunes. It's a honky-tonk-adjacent, often swinging record full of gorgeous harmonies, sweeping pedal steel guitar and vivid lyrical imagery.
Things get off to a suitably gothic-country start with "Be Soon," a wistful, moonlit track showcasing Molinelli and Campbell's ability to intertwine their voices. They ease into the country rock of "Universal Clues," on which Molinelli takes the lead. "Now we're going away and we're trying to stay / And we sin to win and we refuse to lose / The door is locked and we force the key / And we don't pay our dues to the universal clues," she sings.
Molinelli, a product of the New York City '90s folk scene who moved to Jamaica, Vt., has an inviting warmth to her voice. She's so evenly matched with Campbell's often hushed, intimate vocal delivery that it sounds almost strange when either one sings without the other's harmony.
While folk and country are embedded in the album's DNA, shades of indie pop appear on "No Reciprocity," and the duo flirts with doo-wop on "Don't Fall in Love With an Angel," a tune that showcases Bill Conley's keening pedal steel.
"Saturday" channels the sort of pastoral folk you might hear on a Richard Thompson record. But Luminous Crush put their signature on the genre, adding horns and lap steel to give the song an even more dreamlike feel. "Saturday is two years to the day / I became once again my secret name / Saturday is two years to the day / I became once again my one true name," sings Campbell, who recently transitioned to they/them pronouns and the first name Bay, having been credited by a different name on previous Luminous Crush albums.
"So Brave" is a standout blast of fuzzed-out indie rock, a pop thrust right in the middle of the record that does anything but interrupt the flow. When Molinelli and Campbell hit the "ba da ba ba" in the chorus and Campbell's electric guitar soars, Luminous Crush embody their name, all but glowing with melody.
Farewell to the Rainbow Cattle Company is another triumph for the southern Vermont band, an evolving record that attests to the songwriting power and vocal mastery of one of the area's most interesting acts. The album is streaming now at luminouscrush.bandcamp.com. Luminous Crush play Bronwyn-on-Battenkill in Arlington on Sunday, February 4.