Lush pop, indie rock. The other main Black Mountain side project featuring Amber Webber and Joshua Wells. This album is a move from spartan piano ballads and spare cobwebby lullabies into lush pop Technicolor for Lightning Dust. But like the self-titled (which sounded like a spindly black and white photograph of a castle), this record’s main preoccupation is atmosphere. Infinite Light sounds like an elegant, beautiful, surrealist painting of Atlantis. Like the recent Pink Mountaintops record, Lightning Dust draws from its psych roots in Black Mountain, but is concerned first and foremost with pop arrangements. They show tremendous restraint with keeping track lengths lean, and I’d say it works to their favor with some interesting song structures and unusual endings and transitions. Haunted keyboards, cracked, warbled female vocals, floating acoustic guitars, orchestral strings, and woozy electronics create a cohesive mood; warm, eerie, mysterious, panoramic, impressionistic. The quality of these Black Mountain side projects has me wondering what BM will come up with next. No FCCs.

1. Acoustic strums, organs, pianos, airy, light percussion, sweet, handclaps come in, mellow. (3:06)
*2. Popping drum machine percussion, acoustic guitar, blues, distortion, just builds and builds with Webber’s warbling and electro riffs. (2:31)
*3. More melancholy piano chord intro, prominent snare drum and strings, great tense mood, chamber pop. (3:46)
4. Fast-tempo, poppy piano shakers and bongo drum? Builds to a percussion explosion and an electronic climax. (2:17)
5. Rhodes electric piano and riffage, sequencers and waves of electronics all over this track, bleeping and blooping a beautifully melodic backdrop to one of the more solemn tracks on here. (4:57)
*6. Rolling piano and sweet, warm acoustic guitar, male backing vocals, big organs, another good one with hopeful, sweet lyrics and poppy la da das in the outro. (2:48)
7. Duet with throwback pop chord progression, piano chords, big synthesizers. (2:22)
*8. Kind of a grainy, phasered-out production, slower, guitars, ringing pianos, big reverb on vocals, enough little variations to keep it interesting, strings, just gorgeous. (4:03)
9. Kind of sounds like a 60s tune, acoustic strumming, huge production of strings, big drums, upbeat pop contrasted with dark lyrics. (3:09)
10. Midtempo, more Rhodes, organs, organic and inorganic studio touches envelop the track in a dreamy haze, epic strings, chunky bass, another good track. (6:04)