Light Pollution unabashedly endorse marijuana use: “How many glass pipes can you find in this picture?” the band ask under a press photo posted on their MySpace. The video for the track “Drunk Kids” features an ill-groomed young man sparking a joint and smoking it as he drives through a car wash.
On their debut full-length, the Chicago-based quartet combine the grass-induced haze with a contemporary indie-pop sensibility, producing a set of tracks that is often pleasantly — and perhaps unintentionally — reminiscent of landmark early-naughts post-rock acts. When it’s not bouncing atop piano riffs in the vein of Grizzly Bear (“Witchcraft,” “Oh, Ivory!”), Apparitions swirls and drones, and frontman James Cicero’s boyish vocals echo and fade beneath ambient wintriness.
“Deyci, Right On,” for example, could have been lifted directly from any number of stretches of Sigur Rós’s ( ), with its lazy cymbal strokes and arbitrary squeals slowly penetrating thick, glacial vibrations. In a similarly æthereal fashion, “Ssslowdreamsss” finishes the album, drawling. Apparitions is a solid debut that both emulates the band’s contemporaries and revisits a once influential genre that most of that peer group have all but abandoned.
