Sun Araw
Heavy Deeds
2009
Sun Araw is the solo moniker of Cameron Stallones, the frontman for psych-rockers Magic Lantern outta southern California. Beginning in 2008 he struck out on his own creating dark and dubby psych music, and after a few excellent and promising releases ("The Phynx" and "Beach Head") he's unleashed his first proper full length onto the world with "Heavy Deeds". It feels a tad premature to be putting this record so far up an end of the decade list, but Stallones has created a swirling and enchanting new world to inhabit, grabbing from a multitude of sources yet still ending up somewhere fresh altogether. As part of the recently christened 'hypnogogic pop' movement, it's an excellent argument for the vitality and sincerity of the sound.
As far as the sounds here, we're mostly dealing with looping dubbed-out organ lines, repeated vocal phrases and Stallones loose and thrilling wah-wah guitar dancing across the backdrop. Deeply psychedelic and certainly drug-inflected, the individual musical elements bounce and repeat until an endless soundscape collage is formed. While likened to Panda Bear with his loop-obsession and summery sensibilities, these tunes prefer to lay back and soak into themselves as opposed to Panda Bear's melodic clarity. As excellent as his work is in the Magic Lanterns, Stallones has stumbled upon something truly exciting with "Heavy Deeds". A musician that I'll be looking forward to hearing more from in the '10s. -S.R.
Why can’t more jam bands sound like THIS? This album has only five tracks – and some of them do drag on a bit too long – but mostly it just rocks out due to Sun Araw’s crafty skill of bringing together sounds to form really trippy/psychedelic moods. With that said, I only care for jam bands so much…. and this band certainly is one. - Phil
Brutal. Just brutal man. Jam band? It might have long songs and a dub influence, but have you listened to jam bands that self-identify as jam bands? It's another world.
ReplyDeleteSee, Steve, why do you always single out the NEGATIVE parts of my reviews. I said some nice things about Sun Araw - I even said they were the best jam band I've ever heard!
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas!:)
I just think that referring to this as a jam band is misleading. Phish, Widespread Panic and the String Cheese Incident are jam bands...
ReplyDeletedonde es the link to the music?
ReplyDeleteI'm not normally the dude to add the youtube links, but there ya go, here's a song off of the album.
ReplyDeletethanks for posting steve, psychedlic and drug-inflected is right! there was a post on one of the earlier songs on the countdown about the music making the reader want to embark on a drug-induced journey through his internal galaxy or some such thing.... i think this song may fall into that same category :)
ReplyDeletehappy holidays rolling fork and hope you all had great christmases!