Son Lux - Brighter Wounds (LP)

Released 9 February 2018 on City Slang, Brighter Wounds catches Son Lux at a charged turning point. The trio of Ryan Lott, Rafiq Bhatia, and Ian Chang had already grown from Lott’s studio project into a living, breathing band, and this is their most human record of that first era together. It is the fifth Son Lux album, and the second made as a fixed trio, but the numbers don’t tell the story. What you hear is a group stitching grief and hope into something vivid, often dazzling, and occasionally gutting.

Context matters here. Lott has spoken about the album forming around two life shocks, the birth of his son and the loss of a close friend, set against the unrest of the late 2010s. You can feel that push and pull running through the songs. His voice has always carried a tremor at the edges, but on Brighter Wounds it feels almost like a narrator trying to keep the light in view while the ground shifts. It sits in the mix like an instrument, soft and searching, threaded through arrangements that swell and snap with sudden force.

The sound world is classic Son Lux, though more refined. Chang’s drumming flickers between machine precision and jazz sleight of hand, a restless engine that never parks in one groove for long. Bhatia’s guitar is mostly a colourist’s tool, bent into glassy harmonics or gnarly, low-end growls rather than power chords. Around them, Lott layers pianos that clink like cutlery, strings that rise in sheets, and bursts of brass that feel like warning flares. It is orchestral, but never fussy, and the hooks sneak up on you.

“Dream State” is the gateway, a radiant single that rides a galloping rhythm toward a chorus that feels like a window flung open. It is the rare Son Lux song that you can hum after one listen, yet it keeps yielding new details, the kind of track you replay to figure out where that extra rush of harmony came from. “All Directions” takes the opposite route, a patient build that circles a single idea until it breaks into something communal and moving. Even on first pass, it lands like a small ceremony. The album has a knack for this kind of catharsis, not cheap lifts, but earned releases after long, tense arcs.

What keeps Brighter Wounds replayable is the way the trio lets drama bloom without leaning on volume. There are quiet passages where you can hear the edges of the room, then sudden ricochets of rhythm that feel almost percussive and choral at once. Son Lux have always borrowed freely from modern classical, hip hop, and art pop, and here the blend feels organic. Nothing reads as a trick. It sounds like three players with very sharp ears, committed to serving the song’s emotional centre.

If you came to the band later through their work on the score for Everything Everywhere All At Once, this is a fascinating earlier waypoint. You can hear their cinematic instincts already sharpening, the way they build motifs and let them collide. Brighter Wounds is not a soundtrack though. It is a full-bodied album, sequenced with care, and it rewards start-to-finish listening. On vinyl, that arc snaps into focus, sides that feel like two acts of the same play, the needle drop adding a small ritual to music that already carries a sense of ceremony. If you are hunting Son Lux vinyl, this one sits near the top of the pile.

The press at the time picked up on the emotional clarity and the ambition, and the album earned warm notices from outlets like NPR. Fans still argue favourite moments, but there is broad agreement that this is one of their richest sets. For collectors, Brighter Wounds vinyl is a smart grab, a well-loved snapshot of the band right before they stepped into an even wider spotlight. If you are looking to buy Son Lux records online, make sure this is in your cart, alongside other Son Lux albums on vinyl for a good compare-and-contrast spin.

It is also the kind of record that pops up in the new arrivals bin at a Melbourne record store and stops you in your tracks, the cover art beckoning, the credits promising a deep listen. Put it on during a quiet night and you will hear how carefully it is built, how much air sits between the parts, how every swell has a purpose. For anyone curating shelves of vinyl records Australia wide, this is a keeper, a beautiful bridge between experimental edge and melodic pull. It sounds like life in all its messy brightness, and it holds up, year after year, like a light you can carry.