Record Of The Week: Rival Sons

Rival Sons — Lightbringer (Low Country Sound)

Sitting pretty atop the classic rock tree — peerless and without equal — it would be easy for California’s finest to rest on their laurels.

An alternative approach is to drop two full-length albums in the same year and create your own Rivalry.

Jay Buchanan and co. talk about Darkfighter and Lightbringer as companion pieces — complementary bodies of work enveloping a creative moment in time.

But listen carefully to two remarkable records and it sounds like this is more about competing than completing.

Pitch Lightbringer against Darkfighter and that’s where the fun really starts.

Two distinct tracklists, deliberately divided, bounce off each other like punch drunk heavyweights desperate to land the knockout blow.

Where Darkfighter’s raucous Nobody Wants To Die allows Buchanan to recall Rival Sons’ wilder early days, Lightbringer’s luscious Mosaic represents a more subtle attack on the senses.

The former’s Horses Breath is six minutes of brooding, almost psychedelic preaching — prime Buchanan — while the latter’s Sweet Life is a short, sharp shock of 70-styled blues rock that simply wouldn’t sound right on Darkfighter.

Rival Sons could have gone all Use Your Illusion and landed fans with two records on the same day.

But the time taken to separate a pair of genuine album of the year contenders has amplified the contrasting mood and tone that sets apart Darkfighter and Lightbringer.

Light versus Dark

Is there a winner?

Well, when it comes to the tracklist length alone Darkfighter wins 8-6. Then again, Lightbringer’s the ultimate advocate of the saying ‘less is more’.

It’s impossible to imagine anything after Mosaic — a truly spellbinding track that should never be dropped from future live sets.

Of course, that’s where Darkfighter and Lightbringer do find fertile, common ground: songs from both records already nestle comfortably within a Rival Sons show and it’s only then when it could be argued the band’s 2023 releases are complementary rather than clashing.

But Buchanan and co. have always been expert at stitching together different eras to create fluid, teasing, unpredictable gigs — juxtaposing music from different decades, let alone the same year, feels entirely natural for these sonic disruptors.

So back to that inner-band, inter-catalogue rivalry.

Second out of the traps, Lightbringer could have been overlooked. Not so.

Released to coincide with an extensive UK/Europe autumn tour it’s been afforded ample opportunity to steal the show.

It’s not a competition when no other classic rock band can touch you…but Lightbringer just shades Darkfighter in the race to win this year’s Rival Sons title.