About:
“Some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.” — Indie Shuffle
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 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”.
Kranz wrote and self-produced the album in her home and 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.
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”, 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.