Lights & Motion: Reanimation

There are two factors by which the genre of post-rock should be judged by – a litmus test, if you will. One, does it challenge and/or dispel the false notion that at the center of rock music presides a frontman and “proper” song structure? Two, and perhaps most important, does it take listeners out of themselves and into ethereal, ambient and otherworldly realms of which anything and everything is possible when guitars and percussion collide? If this is to be true, then Reanimation, the debut LP from Sweden’s 24-year-old multi-instrumentalist, Christoffer Franzén (aka Lights & Motion), is a near-perfect post-rock album. Bound the single thread that is Franzén’s solitary performances–improvised, layered and manipulated – is a 67-minute epic that ebbs and flows through sweeping reverb, lush textures of orchestrated strings and sonically crushing melodies.

Of the post-rock groups recognized by the majority of mainstream indie rock listeners, Lights & Motion most closely resembles Explosions in the Sky in the band’s habitual use of rock’s standard guitar, bass and drums. And while Reanimation is chock-full of the non-traditional percussion often found in the genre, it’s Franzén’s use of this trinity in creating such majestic and euphoric movements that will astound most. No bones about it, Lights & Motion’s Reanimation is quite possibly the greatest debut album in post-rock history.