Premiere: Film School, ‘City Lights’

Kevin Bronson on January 14th, 2016

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Ten years ago this month, Film School released its self-titled album on Beggars Banquet, a slab of post-punk-cum-shoegaze that put the then-San Francisco-based quintet in league with indie-rockers like the National, Editors and Interpol. The lineup that made the 2006 album had fractured by 2007’s “Hideout,” and singer-guitarist Greg Bertens, who eventually relocated to L.A., carried on with other personnel for 2010’s dreamier, poppier “Fission” before Film School went silent.

Now that 2006 lineup — Bertens, along with bassist Justin LaBo, guitarist Nyles Lannon, drummer Donny Newenhouse, and keyboardist Jason Ruck — is returning with a new EP, “June.” It arrives a little over a year after the quintet had reunited to play a one-off show for Newenhouse’s birthday and found a creative spark that belied the group’s rather fractious break-up years earlier. “The rehearsals for the reunion show hit me like a lightning bolt,” LaBo says. “Playing loud, musically communicating with the other guys, the challenge to be creative—it was an incredible feeling.” Says Newenhouse: “I always felt we were just getting started with the self-titled Beggars release, creatively speaking, so it’s really motivating and inspiring to have this second chance to make good on our potential.”

The EP, the band says, reflects the work of guys who “have gotten married, gotten divorced, bought houses, had kids, struggled with drug addiction, suffered a studio fire, lost jobs, started businesses, taken on daunting responsibilities.” That perspective shows in the majestic atmospherics of “City Lights,” which Bertens says emerged from the quintet’s first jam session after reuniting. The song’s metropolitan-sized drama evokes the melancholy of physical beauty vs. spiritual isolation.

Says Bertens: “The lyrics are about attraction, specifically the lure of attraction and how you can’t control what you’re attracted to. City lights in this song are more metaphoric, like the promise of the flame for a moth. That said, I love driving into San Francisco over the Bay Bridge at night.”

||| Stream: “City Lights”