High school bands, like high school relationships, aren’t meant to last forever. Few survive the college years, when members scatter across different cities, meet new people, explore new interests and generally move on with their lives. That’s how it played out for the Manitowoc indie-rock group The Four Hundred, which disbanded in the late ’00s. But even years later, as member Brendan Benham played with other bands like Group of the Altos and All Tiny Creatures, he pined for the good thing he had going with his old group.
“We all had these different projects going, but everything we were doing was chasing rainbows,” Benham says. “We were looking for that chemistry we used to have in other places and not necessarily finding it.”
By 2012, Benham’s old bandmate Shae Lappen was living in Madison and recording synthesizer-driven solo tracks, with no particular outlet in mind for them. The two began trading ideas back and forth, and it quickly became clear to Benham they had enough of them for a full project. So he went out on a limb: He convinced his old bandmates to move to Milwaukee and start an electronic-leaning new band, which they eventually dubbed Light Music.
“It was weird getting back together, but it felt seamless in a way just because we still had that chemistry we’d built up over time,” Benham says. “Shae and I have been friends for so long that we’ve become complementary songwriters. There’s something about us where we each make the other a better songwriter.
“Playing music is a strange thing,” Benham adds. “Chemistry can dictate things just as much as skill can.”
Last month the Light Music released their debut album, Ocean’s Daughter, the product of a lot of writing and of even more waiting. They’d had it in the can since last August, but were holding out on releasing it until they could secure a vinyl release. Each month they fought the urge to just post the music on Bandcamp so people could hear it already, until eventually the Kansas City label The Record Machine offered them the full vinyl release they were hoping for.
“The dream was to put it out on vinyl, because we had this idea that it would be a beautiful piece of art rather than just a collection of songs,” Benham says. “We didn’t set out to make a concept album, but the album is loosely conceptual, with all these nautical themes and themes of love. We used Aphrodite as the heroine for the record as a way to tie all those ideas together, and we commissioned a friend of ours, Ella Dwyer, to do a piece of art for the cover. We asked her to do some cool interpretation of Aphrodite being born out of the seashell, so you’ll see there’s a boat on the cover that’s named Aphrodite and it’s coming out of the sea foam.”
Tracked over a marathon stretch of six 16-hour days with producer Beau Sorenson, Ocean’s Daughter casts a wide net. At times it recalls the grand emotional release of Arcade Fire, at others the mathematically precise indie-rock of Death Cab For Cutie and revved-up pop of Phoenix, though it plays unlike any album those acts have made. “When we came into making the record and writing songs we knew we wanted them to be dense, well-orchestrated, electronic, catchy and interesting,” Benham says.
Figuring out how to bring such densely arranged songs to the stage has presented its own challenges, but that’s where the 12-month gap between completing the album and releasing it has come in handy. It’s given the group time to build up their live show, and to feel out ways to incorporate computer tricks and, more recently, a light display into their act.
“We’ve definitely had to work hard at it, but I think we’ve come up with a pretty tight live show,” Benham says. “Six months ago it was definitely not as tight as it is now, but now we’ve had the time to brush the dust off.”
Light Music play an album release show with Awkward Terrible and Ruth B8r Ginsberg at Mad Planet on Saturday, Sept. 5 at 9 p.m.
