(2020) Sunwatchers - Brave Rats EP


Review:
Like a squad of beaming cheerleaders, New York quartet Sunwatchers spend much of their working lives cultivating pure joy. Especially on their fourth album, the devoutly playful Oh Yeah?, they deal in sax-and-guitar melodies so bright and rhythms so relentless they feel eternal. On Brave Rats — a subsequent six-track EP, consisting of alternate versions and live renditions of old favorites, plus a few catalog obscurities — Sunwatchers relax their guard, or at least the need to sound so triumphant. Yes, they erupt into a jubilant clatter during “Everybody Play!” and dance through Sonny Sharrock’s “Blind Willie” with the élan of Akron/Family during those fleeting moments when they seemed like the country’s next great jam band. But mostly, they allow the anxiety and pessimism they typically funnel into rapturous hooks and ecstatic waves of improvisation to stand alone. It’s like watching a seasoned pop star dazzle a sold-out arena, then collapse backstage and confess how they really feel. “Sazx,” a rhythm-less duet for Tobias’ yearning horn and Jim McHugh’s jarring guitar, suggests a nightmare driven by a waking loop of self-doubt so extreme it haunts you in your sleep, too. Closer “Pedal One,” a scrap from an old soundtrack, pulses like Steve Reich slowed by Dilaudid, drugging the urban busyness of his work until it scans as dread. Even the magnetic hook and road-trip esprit of “Brave Rats” can’t camouflage the despair in Tobias’ brittle saxophone tone or the menacing keyboard notes that line the track like rusty razor blades. The first several times I heard Oh Yeah?, I pined for something like one of the bummers on Brave Rats, a song that made clear the complex emotions and revolutionary urges at play. Sunwatchers have touched on that feeling in the past, particularly with Illegal Moves. But as the weeks passed and the world changed, the album’s sense of unfettered joy—of shouting down misery simply by playing together—became reassuring to revisit, a reminder of the energy a band and audience can share in a crowded concert hall. A studio album that moves with the delight of a live explosion, Oh Yeah? is even more welcome at a time when that kind of catharsis is temporarily out of stock.





Tracklist:



Media Report:
Genre: jazz, psychedelic rock
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits