by Shelby

In 1992, a newly minted band called Acetone began recording its first songs in a small pool house in Highland Park, Los Angeles. Over the next ten years, the trio—Mark Lightcap, Steve Hadley, and Richie Lee—would release four studio albums and two EPs before Richie Lee’s untimely death in 2001. I only discovered Acetone this year, but the very first song I heard, “Return from the Ice,” stopped me in my tracks. From that moment, I couldn’t fathom that there had ever been a time when I hadn’t known them, loved them, felt the gentle pulse of their languid music in the back of my mind. That song, still a favorite of mine, was never formally released on the band’s original albums. It resurfaced in 2017 for Acetone 1992–2001, a Light in the Attic Records compilation that gathered rare and unreleased recordings from the band’s early years, hoping to shed more light on their overlooked music. Alongside it came Hadley Lee Lightcap, Sam Sweet’s biography of the band and its members, charting the currents that brought them together and pulled them apart.

My immersion into Acetone’s music was instant, as natural and comfortable as slipping into warm water. Sweet’s connection, as he writes in the prologue of Hadley Lee Lightcap, was slower. The music only revealed itself when he heard it in Los Angeles, driving down the Ventura Freeway toward the beach, “as though there was radar within the music that hummed more strongly the nearer it was to the ocean.” In his telling, Acetone’s songs belong to the coast, carrying “a feeling for the water [that] couldn’t be explained, only felt.” Maybe I would have heard them differently had I not discovered them here, in the city where they originated. In Sweet’s account, the influence of place is undeniable—Los Angeles, “built on the bottom of a vanished sea,” its “undulating hills of Highland Park” like “ocean swells that had frozen,” its cars sliding down the freeways like “droplets down branches,” becomes less a backdrop than a living, breathing character.

The other primary characters are, of course, the band members: Lightcap on guitar and vocals; Hadley on drums; and Lee on bass and lead vocals. The book is described as a “nonfiction novel,” which gives Sweet license to employ a lyrical style rarely found in more straightforward biographies. Using beautifully evocative language, he wraps the narrative in a damp, pleasant haze that mirrors the sensation of listening to Acetone’s music. It’s not only the landscape of LA that’s wet with dew, he also describes Lightcap’s “liquid chords,” the “wash of guitar and cymbals,” Lee’s vocals in a “cascading refrain.” But the “nonfiction novel” label is most clearly felt in the liberties Sweet takes when building out the personalities of these characters, who are, in fact, real people. While this approach can deepen the reader’s connection to his subjects, some of these portrayals are troubling, particularly in the case of Richie Lee, who is no longer alive to speak for himself.

The book follows the band from their beginnings as CalArts students in an eccentric, punk-adjacent band called Spinout, whose songs were “loud, obnoxious, and proudly stupid.” Relatively quickly, the trio outgrew Spinout’s parody garage-rock sound and split off from the lead singer to form their own band, Acetone, a name pulled from Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle for its “fluid sound [that] conjured no image.” In Steve Hadley’s apartment, a tiny converted garage, they explored the records that would shape their sound: “mood jazz” to “tiki tunes” to “country steel favorites,” all dug from discount bins for mere cents. Partly because that was all they could afford, but also because they were interested in these strange, unlikely, obscure sources outside of the mainstream. This desire to cull inspiration from “a great sea of great stuff no one else wanted,” “to drill for psychedelia in undesirable territory,” was a symptom of their status as social outsiders. A primary inspiration was Hawaii Plays Old Hawaii, the 1973 debut of a Hawaiian group called Hui Ohana. All three were influenced by surf music, particularly Lee and Hadley, both raised in Orange County with its sun-bleached surf culture. 

This was the environment that produced their first demo, six songs that had come so easily it seemed they had “arrived whole in their hands.” These early recordings, though rougher and more rock-oriented than the weightless, gauzy sound they would eventually embrace, still defied easy categorization. It was “surf music that wasn’t surf music,” showcasing the combined vocals of Lightcap and Lee, singing that was “so diaphanous that it could barely withstand the breeze.” At this time, following the success of Nirvana, labels were investing heavily in underground acts, and Acetone benefited greatly from this indie-rock boom. Once their demo was circulated, their unique sound had them fielding offers from major labels before they had even secured a real gig. They signed with Vernon Yard, a subsidiary of Virgin Records, on the condition that they would retain publishing rights and general artistic control. Though this cost them a shocking $400,000 contract, they still received an impressive $20,000 as their first “rock money.” Not bad for an unknown band of house painters with six songs and no established fan base. 

With the new support of the label, their first album, Cindy, came together quickly and easily—”the first eruption out of which an essence would eventually emerge.” Cindy is ambitious, if occasionally unfocused, its “dreaminess and apocalyptic thunder” hinting at the sublime wash of sound they would achieve in their later output. “Louise” is a standout from this album, a “dangerously simple” tune written entirely by Richie that most closely resembles my favorite releases of theirs, namely the 1997 self-titled EP. Quickly following the release of their first album, they embarked on a tour with British band The Verve, supported by Oasis on the later legs. The tour went well, and it seemed that the band was set up for great success. When they returned to the studio, however, a new uncertainty disrupted their previously easy chemistry. As Sweet explains it, “they accomplished too much, too fast, too easily. They couldn’t know who they were yet because they’d never had any cause to doubt themselves.” The breakneck pace of their success and the pressures put upon them left them insecure, struggling to produce “even the tiniest nugget of usable music.” 

This was also the point at which Hadley and Lee’s heroin use began to impact the band’s performance. It had started recreationally, but soon hardened into a habit. On the weekends, the pair vanished into Hadley’s apartment to use, bound together in a new, destructive intimacy that fractured the previous balance of closeness between the band’s members. As “Richie and Steve pursued heroin in secret,” the “aftereffects hung in the air like smog, darkening the space between them.” Even as they toured with Mazzy Star—Hope Sandoval remaining one of their most loyal champions—Hadley and Lee’s substance issues separated them from Lightcap. They tried to manage withdrawal symptoms on the road with eyedroppers of liquid heroin, Valium, and alcohol, but still, cracks were showing. The tour was generally successful, but Vernon Yard was dissatisfied with their next album, If You Only Knew, and they were eventually dropped from the label. For me, it’s their second-best record—airier and more vulnerable, a precursor to the miraculous self-titled EP that distilled Acetone’s unique magic more fully than any other release.

Despite my personal preference, the process of recording this album was described by Lightcap as an “odious chore.” In Sweet’s portrayal, Lightcap was growing impatient with his bandmates, particularly Richie, who he dismissively calls “the tortured artist in his little pain cave.” Lightcap’s mounting antipathy is strongly felt at the end of the book’s first section, and he even claims that he “would have walked” away from the band if he were “sane,” that he still thinks “about how much energy was wasted being in a band with junkies.” I was already finding the general disdain for addiction throughout this chapter uncomfortable, so it was even more jarring when this section ends abruptly with Richie’s first suicide attempt at age 28. The shock is intentional, as his suicide isn’t addressed until the last paragraph of the chapter, which ends with the devastating line: “The first thing he said after opening his eyes was, ‘It didn’t work.’” I understand, I think, the narrative function of this technique, and it would be incredibly successful if this were a novel about a character named Mark Lightcap, whose friends’ trials serve to develop his character. But this still has to function as a biography of three individuals, one of whom suffered enough to take his own life, and I’m not sure how I feel about his experience being sidelined to serve a tidier story arc.

After Richie’s suicide attempt and a subsequent stint in rehab for him and Hadley, the band regrouped with renewed focus. The commercial failings of their previous albums, coupled with the internal turmoil within the band and their now-tainted reputation, had led Vernon Yard to drop them, but they were soon picked up by Neil Young’s fledgling label, Vapor Records. With the support of this modest contract, they began recording Acetone, the album I consider to be their masterpiece. In the subdued, washed-out beauty of these songs, a new restraint and cohesion allows for more emotional richness and depth than any of their previous efforts. This is the band at their most liquid and mellifluous, with “all three instruments interconnected in a single body waltzing in slow motion, like algae on the bottom of an ocean.” A nearly painful sweetness suffuses the entire album from the opening track, “Every Kiss.” Lightcap’s twanging guitar slips and slides in “aquatic forms” while Hadley’s “cymbals create washes of foam in the corners of the songs.” Combined with the aching tenderness of Lee’s vocals, the experience is completely immersive, like slipping underwater. This “newfound sense of glide” is best expressed on the album’s standout tracks: “Shobud,” “All You Know,” “All the Time,” and “Germs,” which Lightcap describes as “the most perfect thing Acetone ever recorded.”

This perfect record—the final arrival at the voice they had been trying to find all along—should have marked a positive turning point for the band. But the album received little commercial attention. Even in the midst of the late-90s slowcore scene, Acetone didn’t quite fit, too coastal and slippery to be categorized alongside bands like Low or Codeine. Their music was too expansive, too wide open, to be boxed into one genre. After Acetone’s release in 1997, they were set to tour with Spiritualized to support Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. Jason Pierce of Spiritualized was close friends with Richie Lee, close enough that he claimed “the whole making of Ladies and Gentlemen formed around this friendship with Richie.” Their deep bond was reinforced by their mutual heroin use, and when the tour was derailed by Vapor’s failure to submit their visas in time, rumors circulated “that management wanted to keep Richie away from Jason.” So instead of playing sold-out European shows as planned, they were left to their first and only headlining tour, much less glamorous and much less successful than the one they had expected to be on.

Their next album, York Blvd., released in 2000, was their least successful by far—the magic and fragility of the sound they had perfected was compromised by the heavy-handed edits made in production to try to force them into something more commercial and radio-friendly. By this point, Richie’s heroin addiction had deepened, and though the music still carried that trademark spaciousness, the previously achieved clarity was muddled by the studio’s interference and the increasingly strained band dynamics. It was on this album that they chose to replace Hadley on drums, a decision that would mark the end of the group’s unity.

On March 27, 2000, the band played their last show together as a trio. After the unhappy time spent working on York Blvd., a deep disharmony troubled the band, as if making the album had “released some deeply buried unrest.” After Steve quit, Mark and Richie continued to tour as Acetone, but a new “weariness” infected them in his absence. Richie, who had long avowed that heroin was “the only way to live,” had begun expressing a desire to get clean. And then, in 2001, at age 34, Richie Lee died by suicide in the home he shared with his girlfriend and cats. I knew this was coming, of course, but it doesn’t make it any less painful. It’s a gut-wrenching, devastating loss, and the book doesn’t shy away from this reality. This is how his story ends, but it’s not how Acetone dies—alongside the newly reissued Acetone 1992–2001, Mark Lightcap and Steve Hadley rejoined to play again as Acetone, with longtime supporter Hope Sandoval on lead vocals. 

And then came this book, Hadley Lee Lightcap, which gives Acetone the biography they deserve: one that sketches not only their history, but their emotional weight and shape as well—their ripples and undulating waves. Reading it feels less like consuming a traditional rock biography and more like entering into a mood, a spell, a place where music, people, and landscape blur together. Sweet is right that their music belongs to Los Angeles, to its endless freeways and its ocean light, but it also belongs to anyone who stumbles across it now, years later, and feels something in it open like a window. I found them late, almost by accident, but their songs feel like they were waiting for me.

To be very clear—any and all negativity expressed in this review is not meant to actually criticize a) Mark Lightcap, obviously, who seems like a wonderful person, or b) Sam Sweet, who put ten years of love and effort into an overall beautiful, moving piece of writing. This is probably not an issue for almost anyone else who has read this book, and may be something that only I would critique, but I am, personally, sensitive to and passionate about both literary technique and unbiased fact, so this was always going to be squinchy territory for me. Love to all involved, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I am so earnestly overjoyed that it exists—thank you and I appreciate it and please don’t be mad at me.