Bright Light Bright Light
Fun City
YSKWN!
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Issued in June 2012, Bright Light Bright Light’s debut offering Make Me Believe in Hope put ripples on the indie-pop pond. Raves from NME, The Sunday Times and Attitude ensued, doling out praises for the emotionally driven song scripts tied to dynamic electro-pop pieces. Two more studio sets—Life Is Easy (2014) and Choreography (2016)—followed Make Me Believe in Hope, further refining Bright Light Bright Light’s aesthetic.
And this is to say nothing of the series of plush extended plays released in and around those three albums.
For Rod Thomas—the man behind the Bright Light Bright Light sobriquet—the musical ground covered on his previous affairs was substantial. Regarding his fourth album Fun City, Thomas took his time to search for its thematic pulse. The lush FUL∆LEO commissioned cover art—which Thomas describes as a “modern, throwback reinterpretation”—points to Fun City being another engaging Bright Light Bright Light excursion.
Remarking on how the experience of making music for a considerable amount time impacted the birth of this most recent collection, Thomas says, “I think, because I’ve just been doing music for so long now, I kind of forget that there ever was a point when I wasn’t doing it. It definitely feels like there’s a shift with each record. The first one (Make Me Believe in Hope) was very much finding my feet as an artist and you don’t really have any idea how it’s going to go or if it’s going to connect with anybody and how that will translate. With the second album (Life Is Easy), you feel quite stressed about following up (the first); with the third album (Choreography), I had a lot of fun with it, making it about scenes from cinema and pop culture references. With this record (Fun City) I was trying to work out what to do with it and how to use it—especially with everything going on and being conscious of the world around me.”
The dual effects of the coronavirus pandemic and social-political upheaval throughout the year have indelibly left a mark on the collective psyche of the global populace—and artists of all persuasions have not been immune either. But those same creatives have also been moved by the myriad traumas of this age to speak truth to power.
Although Welsh born, the singer-songwriter has been headquartered in New York City for a few years. Living as a gay immigrant in America has provided Thomas with a unique perspective on our current moment; said viewpoint—and a singular incident opening for Cher on tour in 2019—would reorient Fun City on the back end. “I’d written the album way before any of this happened,” he explains. “It was finished and mastered by January. So, the coincidence of the political shifts and quarantine with some of the subject matter is pretty mind blowing to me. Over the last couple of years, I’ve seen America change. Having moved here and feeling like it was an amazing place, to having seen a rise in anti-LGBTQ+ and xenophobic rhetoric—both here and in the U.K. actually—I didn’t feel like there was a way that I could make a record without some social consciousness to it. It was really important for me to make a record about something.”
So how exactly did his participation in the Cher tour influence Fun City? “There was a moment with the Cher tour—whilst that was quite late in the game in terms of me writing the bulk of the record—but the ethos and character of the record was very much shaped by that moment,” he recalls. “I was on stage where I got a bit flustered and I just said, ‘Ugh! As you can see, we’re really gay!’ and the whole arena kind of cheered and I wasn’t expecting that reaction. After the show, we had tons of DMs and retweets, people saying, ‘Thank you so much for saying that on stage; we don’t get representation in this country as much as you think and people don’t use their platform in that way to give visibility to queer people.’ I didn’t realize the power of that and so that was the point in time where I decided that my album was going to be about visibility and representation for the queer community.”
He continues, “I wanted Fun City to be something which is reflective of everything that I feel about the LGBTQ+ experience—which is celebration, heartache, tragedy, jovial (moments), whimsical, comedy—and everything that we have gone through and are still going through. I kind of referenced Sylvester, Bronski Beat, Erasure…lots of artists who used music as a way for solace and escape, but also very much to highlight the healing power of music, to use it to fight injustice, prejudice and give people the energy to get them through whatever they need to get through. So, for me, Fun City is a kind of a Soul Train-esque party that you can jump into, to connect with your community, to find strength and support.”
Across the twelve tracks that span Fun City, Thomas embarks on a mix of storytelling that is specifically aimed at the head, the heart and the feet of its audience. He opens the long player with “Touchy,” a late-night blast of synth-pop that sets the sonic pace for Fun City immediately. The anthemic electronic and clubland tonalities favored up to this point on Thomas’ anterior LPs aren’t discarded—entries like “Touchy,” “Sensation” and “Never Be Lonely” attest to this fact. What’s new on Fun City are the pronounced synth-funk and R&B-pop colors added to Thomas’ sonic palette with “I Used to Be Cool” and “You Make It So Easy” as awesome examples. All these sonics are mixed together in an appealing fashion.
Then, there are the narratives of Fun City—love songs still abound here, yet “It’s Alright,” “This Was My House” and “These Dreams” brim with an intensity that is singular in Thomas’ oeuvre thus far. He described sewing this newfound socio-political thread into the songwriting loom for Fun City, “Whereas the last album (Choreography) was connecting people, this album is connecting communities and it has a slightly more weighted intention then the last one. It is not as escapist. I’ve always said, in the past, that I don’t feel like I have the strength to be a political songwriter. But I really feel like, at the moment, everybody needs to be very clear about their understanding about what is going on. They need to try and understand and try to contextualize stuff, because the lack of context, is to me, what makes for these big rifts that divide society.”
In addition to Thomas’ keen ability as a writer capable of painting striking lyrical imagery, his way with putting a composition across as a singer is also impressive too. While his warm, handsome vocal imbues a dancefloor stormer like “This Was My House” with a human heart, his way around a ballad cannot be denied: “Next to You” and “Saying Goodbye Is Exhausting” are beautifully brought to life by Thomas with two respective guests, Mark Gatiss and Justin Vivian Bond. Thomas has always embraced collaboration as an artist and Fun City only stands to further exemplify this.
In addition to Gatiss and Bond, the remaining support roster for this batch of tunes is as follows: Brendan Maclean, Jake Shears (of Scissor Sisters), Andy Bell (of Erasure), Sam Sparro, Caveboy, Niki Harris, Donna De Lory, Initial Talk, Kaye, The Illustrious Blacks and Big Dipper. Thomas doesn’t lose himself amidst the established and fresh faced talent because he remains the central writer and producer for nearly the whole of Fun City; Scott “Babydaddy” Hoffman (of Scissor Sisters) is one of the few notables to partner with Thomas in a co-penning/co-producing capacity.
Discussing this impressive network of guests—specifically in relation to Andy Bell’s feature on “Good at Goodbyes”—Thomas states, “I think the way that I phrased it to all these collaborators was that it was an album about LGBTQ+ culture and I wanted to populate it with voices that meant something to me within our community. I sent them the songs individually and hoped they would resonate; they kind of said ‘yes or no’ and these are the ones who came to the table. A lot of them are really good friends of mine that I’m thrilled to have on the record. It wasn’t a case where it was a co-write (situation), that’s one way, I suppose, I remained centered in it is that I wrote everything; but I did write them (the songs) with, like, other voices in mind—not necessarily the ones who eventually ended up on the track—but with a kind of dual vocal element to it.”
Expanding on the Erasure co-founder’s collaboration, Thomas says, “I’m really overwhelmed, as a fan and music lover, to have Andy Bell on a song; I really am so grateful to him for doing that. I’ve listened to their music since I could remember listening to music—Erasure they’re my favorite band. I can’t believe I have his voice on my song, I’m so proud of that song (‘Good at Goodbyes’).”
Fun City marks a turning point in Thomas’ already fantastic career that will undoubtedly continue to show great promise with each successive album he puts forward. For now, he is free to bask in the achievement of crafting a project that will leave the listener with a sense that they’ve just journeyed through an immersive, fully realized world where all sorts of individuals unify to celebrate their differences and face down adversity in equal measure.
In these troubled times, art that makes us feel and think is very much welcome.
Thank you, Mr. Thomas.
Notable Tracks: “Good at Goodbyes” | “Next to You” | “This Was My House” | “Touchy”
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