Fantasy does not wait to tantalize and seduce. Amber Webber has the poppy, sensationalistic voice that goes well with this sort of minimalist, trance-inducing, dream pop. From the start, you get the sense that the band will not go on any self-indulgent tangents, a very promising sign for a full-length listening session. In an era where the hip way to musically masturbate is via Macbooks, Lightning Dust do not overstay their welcome or go on long monologues about trivial events in their day. They satisfy the listener with standard indie electronic music that sounds really nice.
If a lot of this kind of stuff (electronic indie pop, however vague that genre tag may be) tends to be like listening to an acquaintance tell you a ten minute story about how at the grocery store the cashier made a snide remark to them as they were leaving and that it made them upset, i.e. it’s repetitive, glib and boring, Fantasy is like drinking tea with your friend that you don’t see that much who writes pretty poetry. The interaction is terse and pleasant. It knows when to amp up or shift directions, so that the listener does not have to make up excuses about other pressing social obligations.
Allegories to human relationships aside, Fantasy is a trustworthy record of the kind that will appear on best-of-the-year lists of bloggers and music nerds. It won’t become a sensation, appear in a Twilight movie, or be played at Urban Outfitters. It is a quaint album for relaxation and for purging away the excess of the day. There’s nothing really innovative, exhilarating or game changing on here, but without records like this one- a dependable, reliable record- to instill a sense of sanity, I would argue, you might go crazy.
