Lightning In A Twilight Hour – There’s More to Life Than Crooks (Single Premiere)

Lightning in a Twilight Hour is the current project of Bobby Wratten, best known as the songwriter behind beloved indie pop group The Field Mice. What began as a new chapter has gradually grown into something of a reunion, with Anne Mari Davies and Michael Hiscock—both former Field Mice members—now central to the lineup. Together, they channel the wistful melodicism, introspection, and experimental spirit that made their earlier work so enduring, while also carving out new sonic territory. The band’s forthcoming third album sessions have already yielded a striking standalone 12″ single on Elefant Records, pairing two contrasting tracks. There’s More to Life Than Crooks is a six-minute piece that draws on the influence of Factory Records and Disco Inferno, combining drum machine, sequencer, and abrasive guitar textures with a luminous bassline from Hiscock. Written as an immediate reaction to world events, it embraces the Camus-inspired idea that “existence is an act of rebellion,” offering a pop song that shimmers with both urgency and beauty. Anne Mari Davies’ vocals soar on the chorus, lifting the track to radiant heights. On the reverse, Haar abandons pop form for something spectral: field recordings, feedback loops, shortwave radio, field recordings made at Dungeness, and Davies’ layered, wordless vocals drifting through an ominous landscape. Produced with longtime collaborator Ian Catt these songs extend Wratten’s long tradition of music as refuge and reflection — tender, searching, and never quite at rest. And today, we are proud to host the exclusive premiere of this magnificent single here on TRISTE©.

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(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 219: Peaceful Faces

Peaceful Faces (©Addie Vogt)

Peaceful Faces is the singer-songwriter vehicle of multiinstrumentalist and composer Tree Palmedo, who also leads the instrumental unit Drinking Bird, and—as a trumpet player—has worked with Fleet Foxes, The World Is A Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, Office Culture, and others. Since transplanting from the genre-flouting indie-rock scene of Boston to NYC in 2018, Palmedo has gained increasing recognition for his ambitious work as bandleader of a six-or-more-piece live band, working in the hallowed post-Beatles songwriting tradition furthered by Elliott Smith, Harry Nilsson, Sufjan Stevens, and more. Inevitably, Peaceful Faces’s cinema-scale pop songs are built on disarmingly earnest lyrics, gorgeous brass and synth-orchestral instrumental sections, and triumphant vocal hooks that morph and grow in significance throughout the duration of the song. His lush debut album, Letters From Late Adolescence was out in 2020, followed, one year later, by the EP Staring at the Damage. In 2023 the sprawling second album, Sifting Through The Goo, Reaching For The Candlelight, came out. Without a Single Fight, Peaceful Faces’ new album, came out in June on Glamour Gowns and features production contributions from Nate Mendelsohn (Market, Katie von Schleicher, Frankie Cosmos, Office Culture) and Dylan McKinstry (Taylor Ashton). In shadowy vignettes, Without a Single Fight’s lyrics address loss, anxiety, aging, and righteous frustration with the empty cadences of modern life.

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