Featured Artist(s): Lanterns on the Lake

They say "Lanterns on the Lake" is a dream pop band. In fact, I've said it too. I described them as "dream scented" in an e-mail to a colleague and thought to define them at first that way, to try and capture their ethereal essence.

But how can you capture a dream? The memory of it fades as your heart beats a little faster on the way out of sleep, the images recede back to the inner depths of your mind. I think that the "dream" metaphor may be closer to the truth if you think of the dream in cinematic terms and point of view. That is, how would a dream be presented to the movie goer in a way that she would understand and relate.

But the dream itself, like the Lanterns' music, is much more complex and inexorably (like their music), more beautiful. This is because dreams are echoes of feelings and thoughts, to be felt and deeply so (again, just like their music). So, if I had to choose a better fitting metaphor, it would be to somehow emotionally feel without a direct physical presence, yet relying on past memories and future hopes to put it all in an overhanging frame of mind. It's not much of a metaphor or an image, I admit, but emotions are not physical and their imagery is very illusive (and elusive) and can tend to be self conscious. Would it be suffice to say that the created music is beautiful and true? Or are words simply inadequate?

My ineptitude to properly describe my feelings hearing these songs aside, I hope I can convey the simple message that they are good, and that Lanterns on the Lake, a still unsigned (how?) north-eastern English group, will sparkle brightly in your stereo if you'll but let them.

Please visit their last.fm page for more songs and their MySpace for the opportunity to buy their latest EP, "The Starlight EP". The hosted songs in this post are at the permission of Lanterns on the Lake.

Lanterns on the Lake - I Will Lay You Down {MP3} (from Recordings 2007)
Lanterns on the Lake - This Year {MP3} (from Recordings 2007)
Lanterns on the Lake - If I Have Been Unkind {MP3} (from the new Starlight EP)