Here is a collection of words describing Smokey Bright’s music culled from various sources quoted on the band’s website:
“Smokey Brights is one of the most exciting rock groups in the Emerald City. One part Fleetwood Mac (without the turmoil) and one part something all their own.”
“Insane charm.”
“… plays rock in its truest, most classic form.”
“It’s jagged, upbeat rock and sexy, sad seventies that will turn, without warning, into a skittering, psychedelic, crushing crescendo climax.”
“Their sound is a warm combination of charmingly lo-fi and charmingly retro.”
OK, you can make up your own mind about Seattle-based Smokey Brights when the band makes its way to Silver Moon Brewing on Thursday, Oct. 9.
The band is fronted by singer Kim West on keyboards and husband Ryan Devlin on vocals and guitars. Luke Ragnar on bass and vocals and Nick Krivchenia on drums round out the quartet.
The band released its first album, “Taste For Blood,” in 2014, and has followed it up with several LPs, EPs and singles along the way.
Smokey Brights’ latest album, “Dashboard Heat,” was released on Sept. 26, on the Seattle-based nonprofit label, Share It Music. According to the band’s website, in alignment with Share It Music’s mission, a portion of the album’s proceeds will benefit the band’s chosen charity: The Vera Project, “an all-ages nonprofit space committed to fostering personal and community transformation through youth-driven engagement in music and art.”
Judging from Smokey Bright’s half-dozen or so music videos, the band appreciates the medium. The new album’s lead single, “All In Who You Know,” is accompanied by a medieval-themed video that was filmed outside in nature. And they clearly had fun making it. The video was directed by frequent collaborator Travis Trautt and features the band fresh off a performance at the Moscow Ren Faire, engaged in an epic quest for a mythical object of dazzling power.
About the song, the band says:
“If corporations are destroying the world, but people make up the corporations, what if the people helped each other? Smokey Brights’ heater of a first single from their anticipated new album, Dashboard Heat, posits just such a proposition. The world’s first anthem for mutual aid via petty theft, this synth-laden banger punches up at celebrities and egg barons and reminds us that the power to push back lies in small acts of resistance that can happen anywhere, even the grocery store checkout line.”
A press release states that the band has “crafted a ramshackle rocket of a record that touches upon cars, celestial forces, childhood homes, light and hope, darkness and grief.”
The group has four songs on the hit indie game, Pacific Drive, and recently recorded the soundtrack for the NPR podcast, Let the Kids Dance!
Meanwhile, in support of its fifth LP, “Dashboard Heat,” Smokey Brights is on terrestrial tour this fall, hitting both coasts, the Southwest and the Northwest.
Smokey Brights
Thu Oct. 9, 7:30pm
Silver Moon Brewing
24 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend
silvermoonbrewing.com/events
$15.72
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