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 Hunter
Manasco shimmers in front of Nineteen Forty-Five armed with nothing
more than a guitar and a poet's soul. Katharine McElroy stands
to his
left, defiantly clutching her bass and answering Manasco's vocals
with her own. Behind them is Will Lochamy, the sweaty, thunderous
driver of drums, deftly navigating Nineteen Forty-Five towards
the light.
I
Saw A Bright Light is the anticipated second release by Birmingham,
Alabama rockers Nineteen Forty-Five. A follow-up to the trio's
highly praised 2001 recording, Together We'll Burn Like Autumn
Leaves , I Saw A Bright Light rallies with the maturity of a sophomore
effort without compromising the youthful discord and the stark
poetry that propels the signature Nineteen Forty-Five sound. The
album is a lyrically potent mesh of dissonant feedback, intertwining
boy/girl vocals and syncopated drum beats.
The disc was recorded over a six-month period in the band's basement
studio
in Birmingham. During the course of recording, Will's drums were
knocked
over repeatedly, guitars were thrown at people, and every single
piece of
equipment in the studio had its turn in the repair shop. As completion
finally drew near, the studio space flooded with mud and water
sent forth
by hurricane Isadore and the remaining tracks had to wait yet
another month
before they would be finished. Once recording was finally complete,
it
took only three days for Dave Barbe (Wilco, Sugar, Son Volt) to
mix I Saw A
Bright Light at his Chase Park Transductions studio in Athens,
Georgia.
Band members slept alongside glowing VU meters, ancient tape reels,
and two
enormous vintage reverb units, no doubt lulled to sleep by the
whir and hum
of the great machines.
On I Saw A Bright Light, scenes from three Southern lives are
relived and
rendered at glass shattering volumes on songs like "She Takes
Drugs" and
"The Police Let Her Get Away", while gnawing pains of
love and madness are
recreated on the melancholy tracks "Someday I'll End It All"
and "Living On
The Waves". The music on I Saw A Bright Light has been stripped
to reveal
the purity in the simplicity of rock and roll, tangibly mirroring
Nineteen
Forty-Five's philosophy. Manasco used only one guitar and one
amplifier
to record the album. He claims he's just trying to produce "quality
rock
music for quality rock people."
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Someday
I'll End It All 
