Light Pollution moved to Chicago from DeKalb about two and a half years ago, but James Cicero, the electro-psychedelic indie-rock outfit’s front man and songwriter, says he barely feels like part of the city’s music scene. “That’s always been weird for our band,” he says. “We’ve played with some cool Chicago bands. We have kind of mutual friends that are in cool bands. But it doesn’t feel like we’re very tied into the scene. . . . We don’t have a practice space where it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, all these cool bands practice here.’”
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Light Pollution is booked by the Chicago-based Windish Agency, a powerhouse that’s home to a vast number of top-tier hipster-approved acts—among them Best Coast, Washed Out, Lykke Li, Fever Ray, the XX, and much of the roster of D.C. label Carpark Records. Carpark, which helped break Dan Deacon, Beach House, Toro y Moi, and Animal Collective (the band’s Paw Tracks imprint is a collaboration with Carpark), will release Apparitions on June 8.
By the time Light Pollution arrived in Chicago they were a four-piece, with only two remaining members from the original lineup: Cicero on synths, guitars, and vocals and Matt Evert on drums. Two friends from DeKalb had joined right around the time of the move: bassist Jed Robertson and multi-instrumentalist Nick Sherman, who contributes synth and guitar as well as loops and laptop-based processing. The sound that this new group developed, which fuses pop songwriting with atmospheric electronics, is what Cicero has captured on Apparitions.
Apparitions has “Pitchfork bait” written all over it, and Cicero is counting on them to bite. He and Evert have quit their jobs, and the other members are only employed part-time—Robertson works the door and helps out with production at the Viaduct Theater, and Sherman is a freelance sound engineer. They’re all prepared to make the band a full-time gig.
Fri 6/4, 10 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, 773-525-2501, $14, $12 in advance, 18+.
