As Austin psych rockers The Bright Light Social Hour celebrate the 10th anniversary of their flagship album, Space Is Still The Place, they look back on a bittersweet, tragic time period that shaped the past decade of their existence.
On June 21st, the band will host a solstice festival, Endless Light, at Mohawk here in Austin, alongside fellow locals Grandmaster, Bruce, Megafauna, and LLuvi.
“People hate Austin in the summer because it’s so brutal, but we all love it,” Jack says. “Summer solstice felt like an exciting time to celebrate the 10 year of this album that’s kind of been our flagship album.”
Jack recalls the summer of 2015, as we begin to discuss the album’s legacy.
“2015 in Austin, especially in the summertime, was this dark, confusing place with a bit of an optimism,” he says. “I still feel that it just represents Austin-psych music, trying to be as objective as I can.”
This was the first time in the band’s career that they had saved up enough money to book a fancy studio to record the album. But instead, they decided to invest in some decent equipment and taught themselves how to engineer and record it themselves.
“It was very intimidating at first,” Jack says. “We honestly recorded every single track of every single song, every instrument, over and over and over and over in this really painful process. We just rerecorded until we were finally very excited by the sounds.”
It took them almost two years, but along the way, they leveled up their skills, with guitarist and vocalist Curtis Roush especially taking the lead on the engineering. They built a home studio, dubbed Escondido Sound, that is specifically catered to their needs and preferences.
“It was like our graduate program,” Jack says, “that taught us to be self-sufficient.”
However, while the band was in the midst of a creative and technical renaissance, it was also a dark and painful time in their personal lives. Jack’s brother, Alex, who was also the band’s manager and guru, suddenly came down with a severe case of Bipolar One with psychotic features.
“We were making this record and we were all living in this house with my brother as well,” Jack recalls. “It was a lot stopping what we were doing to put out fires. He was having manic episodes and depressive episodes that were just harrowing, honestly. And, sadly, we had the date that we were going to announce the record planned. But the day before that announcement, he ended up passing by suicide at that studio out there.”
Jack explains the conflicting emotions, with the whole band trying to gather around a laptop and muster up excitement for the album on the darkest day of their lives.
“It was incredibly bittersweet,” he says. “On one hand it was nice that like those of us who were close to him in those times, we saw how much he was suffering, and there was this sense of relief for him. But when I think back on that time, it still gives me pegs of anxiety. It took us a lot of years to work through all of that together and still, it’s tough at times.”
The passing of Jack’s brother was almost the end of the band.
“That almost took us out just as we’re releasing this record,” he says. “and then, the record did really well for us. We started touring internationally a lot at that time and really breaking out to another level.”
Now, 10 years later, The Bright Light Social Hour’s story is one of triumph and over tragic circumstances. Jack says the current lineup is “thick as thieves,” and have a lot of creative cohesion together.
“We just finished a tour that was just the best of all of our lives. We work together in this psychic kind of way, without having to use much verbal communication. It feels like we’re in a very triumphant moment and it’s little amazing to look back and see how we’ve weathered a lot of shit and almost been blown apart a few times.”
But they’re still here doing it, and Jack is glad to have Space Is Still The Place as a document of that difficult time. Today, they approach music with a very open-minded, almost improvisational approach.
“That was like, we said no to everything,” he explains. “Like, no, it’s not good enough, make it better. We have flipped since then to this very, Yes, and, like they use in like improvised acting. You can’t go backwards. You can only move forwards. So now we move very fast. We trust our intuition a lot more.”
They write songs sporadically, and trust that the spirit of the music will move through them.
“We follow that spirit without questioning as far as we possibly can,” he says. “Not until the very end do we step away and approach it analytically.”
The studio, Escondido Sound, where they recorded Space Is Still The Place, remains their home base. They are working on a new album, their sixth studio album, which Jack says is a big step up from their 2023 album, Emergency Leisure.
“We’re still learning a lot and uncovering new things,” he says. “Staying with the tried and true practices, but ditching some for new ways, new sounds, new approaches.”
While Jack couldn’t reveal too many details about the new album, he did confirm that they will play a few new songs at Endless Light Fest, in addition to playing Space Is Still The Place from front-to-back in its entirety. They are also inviting a few special guests to join them on stage.
They will also be filming and recording the entire show, via Jack’s production company, Hermano Sisters, who also makes all of Bright Light’s videos, and collaborates with other artists around town.
Overall, Endless Light celebrates the band’s resilience and the album that defined their path, alongside talented musicians from Austin’s music community including Grandmaster, Bruce, Megafauna, LLuvi, and more. It’s set to be an unforgettable night.
Tickets to Endless Light at Mohawk on June 21st are available here.
