Civil Twilight

“It’s all the things we can’t explain/That make us human”.... ..“Human”.... ..The three lifelong friends—brothers Steven and Andrew McKellar and Richard Wouters—who make up the Wind-up Records recording group Civil Twilight have been playing music together since they were teenagers growing up in South Africa, emulating the rock music they heard coming out of Europe and America, from Oasis, U2 and Nirvana to The Verve, The Police, Muse and Radiohead. .. ..“We were always really influenced by British and American artists,” says Wouters. .. ..Which is why you don’t necessarily hear a whole lot of the music of Africa on the band’s self-titled debut, but you can hear the continent itself in Steve McKellar’s ambitious lyrics, their existential questioning and spiritual longing the perfect correlative to the music’s expansive atmospheric soundscapes, at once lush, feverish and exotic like a jungle, with the vast, arid spaciousness of a desert. From the dramatic flourish of “Anybody Out There,” with its plea for communion, the Beatlesque melodies-meet-grunge d... more...