Head Gap Studios. (Photo: Tajette O’Hallorhan)
“Some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.” — Indie Shuffle
“This subdued blend of lo-fi indie-folk and dream pop [is] nothing short of a masterpiece.” — The Music
RELEASES
“Melbourne outfit Brighter Later have appeared, fully formed, as a hauntingly original new voice in Australian music. The project of frontwoman and songwriter Jaye Kranz and collaborators, the debut The Wolves drew rapt praise here and overseas for its “dreamy brilliance”(HCM) and half-lit intimacy. The Music described its “subdued blend of lo-fi indie-folk and dream pop [as] nothing short of a masterpiece”.
Jaye self-produced the album in her home, an old bluestone church in Melbourne’s west. Being a neophyte to engineering had its challenges, but it also allowed her a certain amount of freedom: “One of the advantages was not even having a rule book to throw out,” Kranz says. She emerged with an album that doesn’t sound like a self-produced record any more than it sounds like a debut. It’s an intoxicating, enveloping piece of music - "an elegantly arranged universe .. with carefully laid hooks working slow magic” (Rolling Stone).
Band members include bass player Virginia Bott, programmer Patrick Dunn, and drummer Sean Albers, with the full live line-up expanding to include Shane O’Mara, Simon Bailey (Pony Face), Daniel Marsh and Cameron Potts (Montero, Ninety-Nine).
The LP was named Album Of The Week by Triple R and PBS FM and earnt Kranz a nomination for the prestigious Australian Music Prize (AMP), and Best Emerging Artist in the 2013 The Age/Music Victoria Awards.
The album caught the attention of Martha Wainwright who handpicked the band to support her on her national Australian tour. They also supported Calexico (USA) and Hooray for the Riff Raf (USA) and played some of the Australia’s most prestigious venues, including the Sydney Opera House, The Tivoli Theatre, and the National Gallery of Victoria’s Great Hall. It also took them to some of Victoria’s beloved, stalwarts like the Northcote Social Club, Toff in Town, and Meeniyan Town Hall.
Their sound doesn’t lend itself to easy categorisations. It has certain musical antecedents — the hazy swoon of Mazzy Star, the breathy spell of early Cat Power, the haunting, narcotic beauty of Low, “an earthier Sigur Ros” (Weekly Review), even “the gentler side of The Velvet Underground” (OrangePress) — but it sits firmly in its own world. Though only one album in, Brighter Later have found a sound that is indelibly theirs: expansive, cinematic and aching in equal measure. They manage to leave none of this behind when they take to the stage. “On record, the sensuality of the songs, the spectral soundscape and transcendent world generated is one thing, but attempting to relay the sentiment live, well, suffice to say, that’s another. Yet they achieve it, time and time again.” (Rhythms Magazine)
The latest track Brace, described by UK's Line Of Best Fit as "gorgeously hypnotic", is the first track to emerge after the busy post-release year. It retains the immersive quality of The Wolves while lighting out for new territory.”
“It draws us in with its beauty, but also with its ghostly strangeness and the faint echoes of the familiar recast into something else entirely.” — Doug Wallan, Mess + Noise
“Spend a little time with these songs: their layers contain seemingly infinite expanses." from Border Breakers: 21 Australian Female Musicians You Should Know’ — Pigeons & Planes, USA
VIDEOS
'The Woods' is the first single from Brighter Later’s debut LP 'The Wolves', Video by Melbourne illustrator, animator and designer Polly Dedman.
'Come and Go' is the second single from Brighter Later’s debut album 'The Wolves'. '
'All The World' is the opening track to Brighter Later’s debut album 'The Wolves'. This was filmed for Singing Bowl Media's project MUSIC HOUSE - a pitch project documenting musicians playing in their own homes. This was shot in the home-cum-church of Jaye Kranz in Yarraville, Melbourne.
