FILM SCHOOL return this month with ‘Bright to Death’, their fifth album and first full-length LP since 2010’s ‘Fission’. Recorded over 8 days in November 2017 on the outskirts of Joshua Tree, this luminescent collection of 11 songs is the finest showcase yet for the band’s signature layered sonic tones, psychedelic atmospheres, and seductive melodies. The album gets its title from text on an artwork singer and guitarist Greg Bertens had seen, part of an exhibit by Chinese students on the topic of global warming. “Bright to death” popped into his head as the band was recording in sun-blistered Joshua Tree, and it stuck. In addition to four members of the original lineup, the album features drummer Adam Wade (Shudder to Think, Jawbox) on several songs, and was mixed by Dan Long at Headwest Studios and mastered by David Gardner at Infrasonic Sound. “When this lineup first came together in the early 2000s, I never thought we’d be doing some of our best work 15 or so years later,” says Bertens. “Our [self-titled] album came out in 2006, when bands like the Strokes and Franz Ferdinand were in full swing. The music landscape was totally different then—shoegaze was a bad word. That’s changed.”