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This album brings together all fifteen songs from the four EPs Brighter recorded for Sarah Records. The band's debut, Around The World In 80 Days – a 4-track 7" recorded over two days in Ian Catt's studio in south London, with writer Keris Howard playing all instruments – still sounds extraordinary: four dreamy, drifting, gossamer-light miniatures in which Keris's warm, echo-laden vocal floats through layered guitars and faint washes of keyboard. When drums appear in the final minute of the third track, the effect is quietly devastating; until now, you realise, everything has been held together only by the strummed rhythm of an acoustic guitar. It sounds simple, but it isn't, as many bands discovered: the EP became almost a template for a certain sort of indie, but no one had Brighter's access to magic. Another 7", Noah's Ark, followed, again the drums holding back until three minutes have passed and then, in double-time, lifting the song to its climax as Keris's enigmatic words are almost drowned in a rising sea of noise ("Noah's Ark is leaving... I can see it leaving..."): somehow, it manages to be both intimate and epic. Half-Hearted came next, and then Disney, a 5-track 10" introducing drum loops and a denser, more driving guitar sound, particularly on opening track Killjoy. The melodies and lyricism remained as strong as ever, though.
Brighter were a trio from Brighton led by singer, songwriter and guitarist Keris Howard with old school-friends Alex Sharkey and Alison Cousens on bass and guitar respectively. They released four singles and an album on Sarah Records.