On Spectre – their fourth album as Lightning Dust – Amber Webber and Josh Wells embrace as their sole-focus what was once a side-project, in turn crafting their most refined and powerful album to date. After co-founding and then touring with Black Mountain for over a decade, the duo departed the band in 2017 to further their own long-term creative partnership. Lightning Dust has evolved noticeably with each release, from the spare, dark folk of their 2007 self-titled debut, to the synth and drum machine-heavy 2013 album, Fantasy. The through-line of their discography, however, has been how Wells’ deft production is tailored perfectly around Webber’s modestly iconic voice, of which The Believer wrote in 2013, “[her] voice…hovers somewhere between life and death. It’s not limbo, it’s a country to explore.” In this sense the tracks on Spectre echo the spirits of quintessential rock vocalists like Grace Slick and Beth Gibbons, throughout a collection of songs that range from expertly sculpted folk-rock ear candy, to sparse Judee Sill-esque ballads that consist of little more than piano and voice.