Review Summary: Tender blender.
2017, planet Earth. A discovery of utmost peculiar nature was made. Standing on the precipice of possibilities within the Psych/Indie combination canyon, a quadruple collective hailing from bright and caressing shores of Santa Cruz, led by a charismatic vocalist Bret Constantino with a voice of a female angel, Sleepy Sun have stumbled upon the idea of just what that very intriguing combination of genres might spawn. The discovery in question was concerning the sound made possible through the fusion of styles, genres, directions, ideas, ruminations and various assemblies of modi operandi in music. What they unearthed was a way to play their instruments sharply and with edge of piercing sonic production, but mixed with occasional lo-fi jingle-jangle tenderness a gogo of Psych-Pop ambiance, and still come off as heavenly and warmly as is humanly possible.
Much like an autumn Santa Cruz, this album is liberatingly warm, but not to an obnoxious extent. It can slap you in the face with boldness, but for the most part it will be that pleasant, soft warmth people seek when going to Los Angeles. It will not burn you to the touch, but it can bite, even though just playfully. “When the Morning Comes” and its deep bass gloom that seems to be supposed to contradict, but instead just intensifies, the earnestly luminous beauty of the acoustic hook. That is the absolute example of the album’s magic.
It might seem unlikely just how tuneful this record is. One might even consider it a mirage that song after song, musical layer after musical layer, and beauty after beauty, each song is catchy and properly light-hearted, but it is no trick of mind, for they are indeed so easy-going that it appears inconceivable to the mind of a human. How does it happen that a perfectly gentle, tangling “Throes” is followed by a merciless trip into the obscure on “Crave”? And how is that succeeded by the album’s peppiest cut, “The Keys”.
Yes, the stylistic jumps on here are dizzying. But they are never so radical that it seems unfitting. And they are dizzying in a good way, the one that makes your head spin and throws your mind into euphoria; not the one that just makes you weary and yucky. It is also an album of contradictions, where a song titled “Demon Baby” appears as the cutest little journey. But that cuteness never overshadows the rest of the album’s aspects and becomes predominant, therefore leading to quick annoyance. It just stays perfectly seated in a gentle elation-cake with exuberance-icing and winsome-nuggets with beauty-gravy. Yum.
