The Song

Bright Moments • Travelers

We all need bright moments in our lives, be them tiny diversions from an otherwise mundane or stress-filled day or small reminders of what really matters in life. Which makes me doubly thankful for the music of one Mr. Kelly Pratt, also now known in the musical world as Bright Moments. 

Pratt—primarily a very skilled trumpet player—played most of the instruments himself  on his debut album, Natives, which he recorded in his New York apartment during the wee hours of the night when most of us were supposed to be asleep. Employing additional horns, traditional instrumentation, odd found sounds like sampled bats (vampire, not baseball), and pulling lyrics from everything from Scandinavian poetry to the story of the first person to be cured of rabies, the resulting songs sound intimate and unique, ebbing and flowing between sweetly tender and and simply jubilant.

Though this is Bright Moments' first record, Pratt himself has provided backing for bands like the Arcade Fire, War on Drugs, and Beirut, the last of whom provides the strongest parallel in terms of overall sound. 

Give Bright Moments' "Travelers" a listen and see what you think. Then you can head over to Pratt's site to stream the whole album(click Music at the top of the page).

Below, Pratt performs another album highlight, "Behind the Gun," with a full band on WNYC's Soundcheck. You can hear last week's entire performance and interview on Soundcheck's site. And you can purchase Natives over at Luaka Bop or download it from the iTunes.    

Note: Songs posted to this site are kept online for a limited period of time out of fairness to the artists and, you know, our server. So if this is now an older post, the links may well be dead. Buy music!