Jackson Free Press

Under the cover of dark nights and extended weekends, Thomas Sweat, 25-year-old English major at Ole Miss, is the lead singer of Light Beam Rider, a post-rock jam band currently blowing up the Mississippi airwaves.

Sweat was reading a book on Albert Einstein and came across a chapter titled “Riding On A Beam Of Light.” From there, Light Beam Rider was born. Sweat recruited the best members of other Corinth, Miss., bands to join his project in 2009. The band has changed lineups many times since its inception and has had at least five keyboard players. Now, the band is made up of Sweat, lead guitarist Daniel Sowards, drummer Ian Manus and bassist Jesse Sutton.

The band members’ writing style is very methodical—the band members tend to become hermits until the actual songwriting gets done.

“I write a good bit of the stuff by myself, and mainly, the band doesn’t like it that much and changes it,” Sweat says. “My great uncle built this cabin, and we’ll go out there for like a week. We jam out there for a few days until we write a song.”

In addition to playing its most requested songs, “Song About Some Byrdz” and “My Name Is Thunder,” Light Beam Rider occasionally plays punk classics like The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” and The Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?”

What sets Light Beam Rider apart from other bands is the wide range of artists that it bears resemblance to. the blogosphere radiates with arguments about who these guys sound like, from the melodic, international Two Door Cinema Club to the indie flare of southern greats Band of Horses. And to Light Beam Rider, this works as an advantage.

“(The music has) gotten way different. When we first started, we called ourselves Rage Against the Incubus Chili Pepper because we sounded like all of those bands; we didn’t really have a direction and were trying to sound like other bands. Eventually the music felt like it wrote itself, and we’ve also gotten a lot heavier. It’s weird, I’d always thought we’d play more dance-y stuff, but now we play heavier music,” Sweat says.

This heavier style is due, in part, to some of the band’s greatest influences, the Long Island post-rock band Brand New and Mississippi’s own Colour Revolt.

“We love Mississippi and everybody here has been really cool to us. It’s cool being from somewhere where a lot of music began. Bands like The Weeks are really blowing up,” Sweat says. “I’m really excited that there’s this growth of Mississippi music. You can’t get much more Mississippi than us. We’re redneck as hell.”

Catch Light Beam Rider perform on July 6 at Ole Tavern (416 George St., 601-960-2700). Visit lightbeamrider.bandcamp.com to hear the band and download the album, “Mississippi.”