Band Needs Help Finding Northern Light

For a band called Great Northern, they aren’t that great. In their newest album Remind Me Where the Light Is, the duo of Rachel Stolte and Solon Bixler are average rather than outstanding. A cooing girl and sighing boy accompanied by dramatic background music give the impression that they are working to sound like every other indie band, rather than making a distinctive mark on the genre.The song “Story” describes Great Northern and Remind Me Where the Light Is accurately by pointing out, “It’s all the same just different words.” The hardest song to listen to on the album is called “New Tricks.” It has an eerie darkness to it, similar to a horror movie soundtrack, with lyrics discussing things like, “we can see you waking up …can’t see you now.” It is a dramatic and over the top song, whose effect is reproduced on an additional song on the album, “Fingers.” Another song that isn’t easy on the ears is “Stop” which begins with a cat meowing loudly before a piano introduction and Bixler’s apologetic voice singing that he “…heard your voice, I heard you leave, they tried to destroy you, they cut off your feet.”

With its slow soft sounds and hard to decipher lyrics, if this album does anything for you it will put you to sleep. Great Northern’s stories don’t make sense, their direction of where the album is going is in question and every song makes listeners want to stop the album before it gets even worse.