Friday, March 14   12:00 a.m.
Habana Calle 6 Patio   (709 E 6th St)

When an album suggests from its opening notes just how stunning it will be, a sort of promise is made. It is the kind of promise few bands are able to keep, but from the opening string quartet intro straight through the album’s delicate closing, Headlights deliver a pop masterpiece with Kill Them With Kindness. To say there is a remarkable aural space to these songs, or that there are perfectly executed boy-girl vocals, or that the band's version of pop music recognizes both tradition and progress; to highlight these
things is a vain attempt to simplify a complicated thing. This is a debut LP that will be remembered.

Kill Them With Kindness follows two EPs, a tour-only live recording, and a split 7" with Arts & Crafts band The Most Serene Republic. After recording basic tracks with Kristian Riley (Maritime, Decibully) at Bionic Studios in Milwaukee, Headlights applied the finishing touches at the band's farmhouse just north of their hometown of Champaign, Illinois.

This record is alive with a pulse that beats with shoegaze spirit. Through its veins runs the lifeblood of an indie-pop band not afraid to incorporate a synth wall of sound and a mod organ in consecutive songs, not afraid of anything at all. There is a freshness in vision, one that has followed these three musicians through bands and incarnations that could only have led to this version of the present. There is a synthesis of keyboards and guitars, of vocals, of ethereal programming and huge drums; a solidification of lyrics centered on the paradoxes, the ups and downs we all experience. And in this world of stun or be stunned, by the time Kill Them With Kindness shimmers to its close, you realize not only how remarkable the album is, but how rare it is for a debut LP to yield such dramatic results.