(2021) Sun June - Somewhere


Review:
Should you routinely fall for fey, winsome singers, weaving ethereal shimmers of song, backings heavily reliant on chorus pedals and harmonics, please approach this with caution, as it will certainly have to be added to your collection. But Sun June are a deal more than just the lush vocals of Laura Colwell, being a five-piece band, who frame their songs in a summery vibe. The five members are drawn from all corners of the US, the core of Colwell, on keyboards and guitar as well as voice, and Stephen Salisbury, guitar, meeting in Austin, Texas, each working as part of the huge ensemble cast of Terence Malick’s extravagant and experimental “musical”, ‘Song to Song’. Recruiting Michael Bain on lead guitar, and a taut rhythm section of Justin Harris and Sarah Schultz on bass and drums respectively, this is their second album, following on from 2018’s debut, ‘Years’. Describing their music as ‘Regret Pop’, their own phrase, it isn’t a bad description, a sense of melancholy perfusing the fragility. This record takes still further that sense, managing to be both sombre and lightweight at once, and where lightweight is not a put-down, more a description of how the melodies float. The album opens with ‘Bad With Time’, hung initially on a single extended chord, Cowell’s voice emerging as the rest of the band join in, gently chugging guitar pausing to give weight to her words. “I didn’t mean what I said”, she sings, “but I wanted you to think I did”, alongside references to Patti Smith and Jackie O. ‘Everything I Had’ then starts with an attractive bass motif and languid drum shuffle, before the chiming of guitars reappear, along with electric piano. It is important here to reference the part producer Danny Reisch has had to play, all instrumentation mixed high and crystalline, enveloping rather than underpinning the vocals. This sometimes can leave the lyrics hard to discern, but this doesn’t detract one bit, the mood being more buoyant than the content, with only odd phrases lingering. But when they do, they do, with ‘Singing’, a pleasingly soporific strum-along, confirming that point with the possibly disturbing refrain of “waiting for my head to roll”. Sometimes the guitar captures the mood of Chris Isaak, the timbre of the songs not a bad reference to him either, this being well demonstrated on ‘Bad Girl’. Given this leads then into ‘Karen O’, I wondered as to a lyrical link between the songs, but, no, it is about seeing her play live, rather than being specifically about her. There is a sense by now that the songs are slowing down and they are, ‘Everywhere’ barely moving as it lurches fitfully into gear, with the pulse of the drums proving a sudden slow jolt. ‘Once in a While’ is perhaps the most delicate track on the album, with its blanket of synthy swathes, again courtesy of Reisch, vying with metronomic drums to keep it safe, a reminder now to The refrain sticks, hard to shake off after even a casual listen, with that slo-mo and near inertia continuing into ‘Finding Out’, the chorus pedal still chiming away, joyously. ‘Seasons’ is another lazy lilt, for Sunday afternoons of reminiscence and reflection, picking up a bit for the slowly anthemic ‘Real Thing’, a questioning love song; Cowell and Salisbury became a couple between the making of their two records. “Is this the real thing”, she sings. I hope so. Closer, ‘Colors’ adds the new dimension of some harmonies, almost certainly double-tracked, lulling you gently into the subsequent meandering keyboard reverie. A brief reprise of the vocals and it stops, suddenly and it’s all over. Scarcely forty minutes that have both stretched that time, yet disappeared in a moment. ‘Somewhere’ is a charmer of a disc, deceptively slight, each listen uncovering a nuance of sound or sense unnoticed previously. Capable both of bringing thoughts to life or extinguishing them completely, it is the ideal trigger to whichever of those you desire from it. While the mood may not be markedly dissimilar, song to song, this is overall a strength, as each song has enough subtle character and this grows with each listen.





Tracklist:
01. Bad with time
02. Everything I had
03. Singing
04. Bad girl
05. Karen O
06. Everywhere
07. Once in a while
08. Finding out
09. Seasons
10. Real thing
11. Colors


Media Report:
Genre: dream-pop, indie-rock
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