Tulip Frenzy

If T.S Elliott had been a fan of rock’n’roll he would have rethought this “April is the cruelest month” thing.  By April, the record releases are coming fast and furious.  January’s a different matter.

Which is why it is so fantastic that on January 28, Sleepy Sun released Maui Tears, which has gotten us through, oh, all sorts of things: snow days and cold, avalanches of work, that feeling when you are midway through writing your fourth novel where it seems you are still deep underwater, legs kicking, trying to get to the surface before your lungs explode, all the while worrying about the bends.  Oh, okay, back to Sleepy Sun’s great new album.

For those not hip to the band, just go check out “Galaxy Punk.”  It kicks with the force of White Denim’s “Drug,” a perfect pop song but also a showcase for the kind of virtuoso guitar playing that just saws its way through soft brain matter.

Maui Tears is constructed along the blueprint specs that Stephen McBean used in Black Mountain’s Wilderness Heart: there’s tuneful, exciting, straight-ahead rock’n’roll (“The Lane”) followed by acoustic balladry you might have found on early Led Zep, and then immersion into the headphone imperatives of metal-psyche.  “Outside” is, for our money, a better version of MBV than anything found on m b v.  “11:32” is a mere 4:10 worthy of punk-metal goodness, and on “Thielbar” you can catch a whiff of Black Rebel Motorcycle exhaust and it smells like… victory.

We really like this album not simply because there’s not a lot of other great new music to listen to — at least not until Temples’ rec comes out on Tuesday.  We really like this album because it is amazing.

This entry was posted on February 9, 2014 at 6:59 pm and is filed under Music with tags "Maui Tears", Black Mountain, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, My Bloody Valentine, Sleepy Sun, White Denim. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.