Fulton Lights, the project of Andrew Spencer Goldman, has resurfaced with "Well the Night Has Come," a four-song EP anchored by its thrilling title track. The song, “Well the Night Has Come,” takes well-known material and warps it into something weird/pure. Ben E. King’s ageless “Stand by Me” is now a brittle meditation on love and fear in the world our children inherit.
Goldman describes the song as having its origins in his own bedtime rituals with his daughter singing “Stand by Me” night after night, until the words started to warp, refitting themselves to incorporate his anxieties about what would become of the planet. The result is intimate and unsettling, a father’s lullaby whispered under the shadow of the unknown.
“Well the Night Has Come” tips its cap to its source material, the tremble of vibrato guitar, a soft cabasa beat, and the glisten of a triangle, but sounds filtered through a darker prism. Karen Waltuch’s string arrangement wafts like fog across rumbling, echoing drums, while a distorted Casio hums ghostly, mercilessly. It is a world of warmth and disquiet, every line quavering between comfort and its opposite.
Mixed by the Grammy-nominated Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu, Book of Knots) at Studio G, the song captures that delicate Fulton Lights alchemy, striking, grounded, experimental, and profoundly human. ‘‘Well the Night Has Come’’ isn’t just an homage here to a song that will never age. It recasts it into something that feels urgently of this moment, a hymn written for parents, dreamers, and anyone searching for solace when night truly falls.