The Daily Spin II

Son Lux | Lanterns

Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Lanterns (2013)

Artist: Son Lux

Link:

Lanterns feels so intensely constructed that it almost runs akin to a museum exhibit - touch it, and the fragile threads connecting it all might snap and blow away. It’s beautiful - futuristic, yet archaic, as though trying to draw together the entire length of humanity and express it in one forty-minute draw.

Done well, this results in masterpieces that fulfill the weighty expectations placed on them. My personal favorite follows a more minimalist route - ‘Easy’ glows as a sparse, broken anthem, but the maximalist shine present in tracks like ‘Lost It To Trying’ are just as beautiful in their own right.

It’s a strange thing, to make music that yearns to find beauty in a world that’s so frequently described as harsh, violent, and uncaring in these same songs. When executed correctly, it’s an ode to perseverance and a beautiful one at that - but too frequently, this feels a bit unnatural. The story is too well-woven, the craft a little too fine. To err is human, the saying goes, and an album that feels so blatantly intentional winds up losing some of that emotive sensibility.

Rating: 8/10

Best Tracks: Easy

Worst Tracks: Pyre