Duo takes ‘different exit’

THEY consider themselves nomads, have lived in a Northern California commune and currently make camp in an adobe in the mountains outside Santa Fe, N.M. They are active with such groups as the radical environmental group Earth First. They go by the names Nabob and Rabob. They write songs with titles such as “We Share Our Blanket With the Owl” and note that lyrics on their new album were written “in a tent, tepee or far off the trails of Point Reyes National Seashore.” And they have been planted firmly in the burgeoning “freak folk” scene alongside such fellow neo-hippies as Devendra Banhart and do-it-yourself Americana artists as Will Oldham.

So you don’t even have to hear the music of the duo Brightblack Morning Light to know what it sounds like, right?

Not so fast. Rather than the strummed guitars and Eastern allusions or rural psychedelia often favored by artists in that scene, the new “Brightblack Morning Light” album floats on the electric Fender Rhodes piano of Rabob (Rachael Hughes), with the subtle slide guitar of Nabob (Nathan Shineywater) and touches of horns and gospel-rooted background vocals giving an overall tone of Southern ambient-soul music. What they and their shifting cast of accompanists will bring to the stage of the Troubadour on Friday is closer to the narcotic dreams of Mazzy Star than the patchouli pastiches of the Incredible String Band.

Shineywater, reached by cellphone after he’d had a long walk in New Mexico hills, says the approach is a natural outcome of his and Hughes’ upbringing in Alabama, where church music was ultimately filtered through the droney guitar assault of ‘90s indie bands.

“We’re definitely a different exit,” he says of the road that Brightblack took to its sound compared to various compatriots’ routes. “Rachael and I experienced a lot of the same things at the same time. We grew up singing religious and spiritual music in a rural environment contaminated with pop music. And at the same time we started hanging around Birmingham, and Dinosaur Jr. and My Bloody Valentine came through here and left those sounds that took some years to digest.”

For more than a decade, the two musicians, both 30 now, played in various bands (apart and together) and changed residences several times. A few years ago they crossed paths with Oldham (a.k.a. Bonnie “Prince” Billy), who took them on the road as an opening act and helped set up some sessions for their first album, the more Americana-sounding “ala.cali.tucky.” Last year the influential ‘80s-’90s band Slint reformed and tabbed Brightblack for an appearance at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England -- Shineywater’s first and still-only trip abroad (though a U.K. tour is booked for the fall).

Around the same time, respected independent label Matador Records offered a deal, and work started on the new album. Meanwhile, Brightblack found itself increasingly sharing bills with Banhart, Vetiver, Joanna Newsome, Espers and others pursuing various folkie, psychedelic tangents.

Jay Babcock, founder and editor of the L.A.-based alternative music and culture monthly Arthur, booked the band on last fall’s Arthurfest concerts and again for the more recent Arthurball follow-up. He sees the act as one of the most valuable in the progressive community.

“That blissfully stoned, beautifully mellow, deeply soulful sound involves nature, sympathy, cosmic awe,” Babcock says. “If any band is deeply rooted, that’s them -- more deeply rooted to the planet than any musician I know. I don’t know anyone who sounds like them, really.”

Shineywater, who still bears a deep ‘Bama drawl, is a little wary of talk about a music community, though. When asked about artists he feels connected to, he replies, “People who are alive right now? I hate to say ‘community of music’ because too often that’s a category or style on a record store shelf.”

The kind of connections that he’s interested in reach far beyond music. He’s been in contact with “traditional folks” from the Andes Mountains in South America and has been reading the work of controversial early 20th century anthropologist Jaime de Angulo.

“I’m not being too pessimistic about the idea of community,” he says. “But my activism with Earth First shows me there’s all kinds of strange consciousness and everybody’s reacting to it best they know how.”

Shineywater says touring the U.S. has given him some insights into stronger needs for environmentally and socially oriented urban planning. But despite his nomadic inclinations, he is not sold on touring as a way to experience the world.

“I haven’t really gotten to see the places we’ve been,” he says. “[We] get in the van and don’t see anything. I want to go places; hope I do some day. But I don’t want to do the wrong thing to get there. Unless I go there in the right head, I won’t take the right things from it.”

But he does see the potential in music events to spur action.

“How many more functions can one gathering serve,” he says. “One? Eight? Or should it only serve Budweiser? I want to be of service. I have a definite goal of being of use, and that speaks for Rachael and the consensus of our gathering. We like to think of ourselves as being of use.”

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Brightblack Morning Light

Where: Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. Friday

Price: $10; $12 day of show

Info: (310) 276-6168