Guiding Light by Ron S Peno and The Superstitions

"Guiding Light", the new album from Ron S. Peno & The Superstitions

Introducing "Guiding Light", the transcendent third album from Ron S. Peno and the Superstitions. "Guiding Light" follows the critically acclaimed releases "Future Universe" (2011) and "Anywhere and Everything is Bright" (2013) as the purest expression of the band’s sweeping, propulsive chamber rock to date.

In recording these eight stirring journeys into the realms of uncertainty, remorse, restlessness and yearning, Ron S. Peno and the Superstitions brought the passion and grand atmospheres of their renowned live shows into the studio. The result is an album that’s urgent and unabashedly emotional, yet also exquisitely refined. In places it’s a surefire floor-filler, too.

Here, then, is that rarest of things: a record that hits the heart as hard as it hits the hips.

On ‘Over Again,’ Peno sings, “Outside, I’m riddled with doubt.” In here—on "Guiding Light"—he is a man completely in his element. Recorded at Northcote’s Soundpark Studios and mixed and mastered at The Mill by veteran craftsman Andy Stewart, "Guiding Light" finds the band’s incomparable energy and ingenuity coalescing around the finest collection of songs of their career. Crowd galvanisers like ‘Just Like Diamonds’ and ‘Kid Gloves’ are here, along with a blazing cover of Bobby Darin’s ‘Not for Me’.

These are songs that tug and needle at the most essential corners of the soul. Most have been finessed to perfection over the past few years while being performed live to adoring audiences in Australia, France and Spain. And it shows.

“We’re almost there,” Peno sings on the penultimate song. Listeners will beg to differ: with "Guiding Light", Ron S. Peno and the Superstitions have arrived.

(Gerard Elson, September 2017)