(Sun Ark Records, 2011)
I'm not unfamiliar with Sun Araw. How the project's been gaining momentum over these past couple three years. The whole lazy psych movement as it's seemed to me. Similar to bands like Wet Hair and Religious Knives (both of whom having also released albums this year) that had so much promise in their inception having almost completely petered out now, shedding everything that first marked them as bands to watch. Now churning out limp, indulgent psych nothingness. I'm being overly harsh, but in a musical environment as crowded as today's, bands like these are the worst kind: offering music that steals away your time hinting at something grand only to deliver a notch above mediocre. (Even now I want to disbelieve it, to listen again and have them prove me wrong.)
I've been lumping Sun Araw into that category. And while I've still sampled previous Sun Araw records with a hopeful ear, I'll admit to being skittish at the first signs of blah-ness surfacing.
Ancient Romans has got me though. I don't know what it was that kept me listening through the first half of this plenty lengthy record, but something clicked, or something is genuinely different about this record that has me swooning amidst the soupy debris that Cameron Stallones has cooked up. This record is hot stuff for realsies. Super thick like late era Black Dice, but slowed way down and happily injected with dub and kraut influences. I'm still coming around on a couple of the slower tracks on the back half of the album, but that hasn't stopped Ancient Romans from consuming my headphones. If you've been an early supporter then you already know this, but Sun Araw is straight jammin'.
Sun Araw - Lute and Lyre
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