AU

AU’s third album, Both Lights, is a recurring dream. Eleven songs made by the Portland, Oregon-based duo Luke Wyland and Dana Valatka, it’s a story of Time. Three years to be exact: since their critically-acclaimed 2008 album Verbs and its 2009 EP evolution Versions, there’s been a long exhale. A little defiance of the double-speed countdown of the indie hype clock. And a hell of a lot of living. Turn it on. 

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More than a mere accompaniment, it’s a gleaming mirror. It’s an exaltation, an exhalation, a monument of extreme composition, the child of collaboration and isolation, a preamble to a wild live show, a statue intact in the violent wind of art and commerce, and, simply, a record about love. It’s for itself, and, in being that, it’s an album that can be understood like a person. “It’s the topography of me,” says Wyland. So you follow the coordinates. In its eleven songs, Both Lights constructs new sonic and psychological terrain for the listener. It unfolds like a story, both in its hyper-attentive, graceful, and often fierce instrumentation — the language of Wyland and Valatka — and in its heated and naked emotion. “This is all inner struggle, inner growth, inner seeking,” said Wyland. Set to music, life sounds like AU. [Sara Padgett Heathcott, Hometapes]