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Kid Lightbulbs
Infinite Normal
We talk a lot about AI “art” these days, those of us who make music and love music. It’s something of a pat observation that AI cannot, and likely will never be able to, produce something with the emotional weight and significance of a human artist. And while that is a take worth betting on, what often goes unsaid is that many of us make a lot of music that doesn’t reach deep enough into our souls to tear out something true enough to meet that standard.
Even many artists that regularly hit the mark have things in their catalog that could probably be matched by the AI generators of, say, five years in the future.
But I defy any megamind hunk of metal to do what Kid Lightbulbs does on his fourth LP, Infinite Normal.
Brandon Lucas Green, the flesh and blood human behind Kid Lightbulbs, has stopped issuing new music to streaming platforms. He also writes compellingly about his process and his artistic journey, and is very candid about his decision making as regards things like streaming.
He offers a subscription model for fans, he releases solo piano meditations in between larger projects, covers of other small indie artists, collaborations - in short, he’s one of the most accessible and intriguing case studies you could ask for about where independent music is now, and where it’s heading.
And on top of it all, he’s a fascinating artist. This isn’t easy music, it will invariably be too much for some substantial percentage of the listening audience, and even for those of us who’ve come to trust his artistic instincts, it often takes a few focused turns through a Kid Lightbulbs record before things really click.
Partly this is because the music is challenging, and the arrangements designed to convey maximum emotional clarity and punch rather than to keep you tapping your toes or muttering the hook.
But at least as often, it’s because he manages to be thought-provoking in real time in a way I don’t know anyone has matched for me. A Kid Lightbulbs song will often kick you off the edge of your concentration into a stream-of-consciousness spiral, like some sort of Internet-age Leonidas screaming “WE! ARE! PROCESSING SOME SHIT HERE!”
Sometimes it takes five or six listens before you even notice your favorite part of the song, in the final minute, because the first few listens always end with you ruminating on a mistake or a worry or a victory or just feeling so damn exhilarated that something can make you feel this way again.
“Cult of Lightbulbs” is Green’s subscription model on Bandcamp
It’s hard to do any sort of typical album review of a Kid Lightbulbs record, because every track offers a chapter’s worth of reflections and observations, and at some point you run out of fucking superlatives.
Should we discuss the arrangements? Soundscapes have always been a hallmark of Kid Lightbulbs’ work. Infinite Normal contains an enormous amount of air, room to stretch, room to breathe, room to luxuriate, perhaps more so than the other LPs (see: “precariat” which could almost be a set piece during an evening of Jazz at Lincoln Center, or the bulk of “softener” which wouldn’t have been out of place on a couple of Radiohead albums).
But there’s still a staggering amount of sonic world-building going on. Witness the way that “womb” - possibly the most “sellable” track on the record with its guts-on-the-table text and transcendantly beautiful melody - explodes into a hurricane of screeching guitars and mournful howling towards the end.
Or the way Green layers on the instrumentation in “i stood in the rain pt. 1” as he moves through the track until it all melts down into a cacophony.
Or the nasty guitar licks that pick up steam on “poor man’s version”, becoming more and more insistent.
Or the frenetic fever-dream build of “the grass is quicksand”.
Or the beats that Green uses throughout the album, each one sounding like it must have taken days of careful editing and a dozen revisions.
Or listen to what’s happening behind the poem at the end of “performance” and ask yourself how much time was spent on something that 99 out of 100 artists might have just left bare behind the spoken words.
Or perhaps we could focus on the thrill of watching an artist wear this many hats. Green is a fantastic pianist, and many of the piano interventions throughout the album feel improvisational, but always thoughtful and beautiful.
He’s a terrific producer, perhaps the best self-producer of anyone we’ve reviewed this year. The clarity and the confidence of the decisions made in these mixes is impressive, and the range of sounds brought to bear is staggering.
But perhaps the most joyful moments in Infinite Normal are where you can feel Green pushing against the frontiers of his savoir-faire. Particularly the guitar work, which feels the most human of any of the performances on the record. Which is not to say it’s weak - it’s anything but. There’s some terrifically effective guitar work across the record, and a few solos that build powerfully on the emotional punch of their respective songs (see: “stay awake” where I’ve never been so grateful that an artist didn’t polish out the human frailty from a performance).
I could write an entire review just on the vocal performances of Infinite Normal. Green has pulled so much raw feeling, vulnerability, angst, resignation, and authority out of his voice on this record. He’s always been great at the slightly sinister, aggressive, polemic bars (see: “performance”). But more so than ever before, his voice is put to the service of making you feel how broken we are, all of us, under all the muscle and menace.
“womb” - and it’s not possible to emphasize enough what a masterpiece this track is - contains heartbreakingly tender moments where Green’s voice cracks and pleads and then, with the barest warning, lifts off and becomes a cry of defiance.
In “stay awake” there’s an element of overwrought sincerity to the performance, which lends an air of uncertainty to the narrative. Performance and self-obsession are something of a theme on the record, and the way the vocal is extra-bassy at the top of this track makes it feel, intentionally or not, like even the most intimate, cards-on-the-table moments of a relationship can’t fully escape the addictions to self-consciousness and performance that we’ve cultivated in our modern lives.
Let’s talk lyrics. There’s so much going on in a Kid Lightbulbs record that lyrics have probably gotten a shorter shrift than they deserve in his catalogue. But the record contains some excellent lyrics.
I stood in the rain today, the drops made their way down through my hair, down my face, through my lashes, making black trails as they went, eroding anxiety, through all the contours of my skin, erode years and years of pressure - no matter how much AI bros try to delude themselves and us, you have to have lived a life to know what that feels like, and that makes all the difference. NB - this lyric was contributed by a person we’ll call (in the name of anonymity, not patriarchy) Mrs. Lightbulbs.
Just a pale sad loser in the backwoods, sucking down the news like a ravenous vulture, turn it into music, I don’t know if it’s any good - something real edgy and alternative 90s, thirty thousand others all derivatives like me, don’t know what’s me or the affordable machinery - it’s Green’s gift to all the artists he has afflicted with imposter syndrome that he lets us in on his own moments of self-doubt and second-guessing.
Get out your camera, take a shot, do something flashy, feel the rot - hang on while I make a TikTok about how much I like this song.
And the one that made me smile the biggest - from the artist who released albums called Throw Myself Into the Bay and Step Into The Ocean - comes this line in the final track: we’re so good we forgot how to feel, like this shit isn’t real, and that’s what keeps me crawling towards the water. The man has a sense of scope and coherence, that much is for sure.
There is more to say, too much more, but I’ll end with the observation that one of the marks of great art is its ability to be what you need it to be, and to hold its power in whatever space you make for it in your own life and mind. This is something that Kid Lightbulbs does well, partly because of the priority given to emotional depth rather than narrative precision, and partly because of careful lyricism that doesn’t zoom in too close or spoon-feed too much.
“womb” and “the grass is quicksand” are great examples of this effect on the album. But my favorite example, in my favorite song on the album, comes at the open and close of “stay awake”.
The voice speaking on either end of that devastating, heart-wrenching track is oversaturated and muffled beyond comprehension like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoon. Now, it means whatever it means to the artist. But to me it’s a stroke of genius that drives home the way we take each other for granted, talk past each other, don’t even notice half the time what’s happening with our partner or what’s being communicated in all the little ways we send each other signals.
A small thing, perhaps. But an album this rich is built of all the small things, after all.
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