A Sunny Day in Glasgow have one of the best band names I’ve ever heard. Not only is it a pretty decent joke but it encapsulates the band’s sound very well: a flash of something warm and shiny in the midst of cloudy territory. Maybe the only more appropriate moniker for a band is Screeching Weasel (who really do deserve a listen).
Sea When Absent, their third full-length, was recorded amidst a series of changes that saw the entire band replaced excepting founding guitarist Ben Daniels (and now spreads their membership over Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Sydney AU) and takes the shoegaze wall-of-sound approach to extremes for a lot of its 47:06. Nothing is left to its natural sound, the whole record is extensively processed- giant guitar distortion, big swirly synths, bit-crushed and echoed vocals, drums compressed about as tight as a snare can be compressed, and reverbs, delays, and choruses all around. This produces a thick, full-spectrum sound that wraps the listener gently in its warm fuzz like a wool blanket. What it also does is cause the layers of the sonic texture blur considerably, leaving a consciously swirled sound that makes the surfacing of individual elements remarkable and piercing events. For example, “In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry)” has a forceful bass line pushed to the front, then the echo-soaked vocals are suddenly clean and crisp for a run through the chorus, followed by a seagulling lead while a chattery rhythm guitar builds far to the sides. A Sunny Day makes this technique work well through the whole of Sea When Absent; I wouldn’t have wanted to mix the complicated sonics of this record.
Unfortunately, I need to repeat my oft-heard grumbling about 21st century sound records- it gets quite same-y, with a lot of similar tones and tempos throughout. A Sunny Day manages, though, to keep just enough going on to make deep listening rewarding: a surprising little chiming guitar break tucked into “The Things They Do to Me”; soft, harmonious vocals and pad synth at the front of “Boys Turn Into Girls (Initiation Rites)”; the guitar solo that soars suddenly out of the middle of the otherwise pretty-but-bland “Crushin'”. It works less well when the add-ins are just straight electronic noises or heavily over-chorused Flock of Seagulls guitar chimes (the worst offender being “Never Nothing (It’s Alright [It’s OK])”, which also gets docked points for having nested asides in its title). Casual listeners, though, will mostly just get the big wash of sound – which isn’t a bad thing, it’s a distinctly pleasant atmosphere. Probably the biggest irritation of the album is that Annie Fredrickson and Jen Goma’s pretty vocal tracks are generally low in the mix, making even concerted efforts to dig up the actual lyrics from underneath the sediment of distorted echoes difficult.
The best songs find the sweet spots between the overall sonic structure and innovative pieces. “MTLOV (Minor Keys)” has a fantastic chirping, poppy refrain that’s incredibly infectious, while “Double Dutch” plies the Lush-est side of Curve; “The Body It Bends” works in some subtle horns way down in the mix, and “Oh I’m a Wrecker (What to Say to Crazy People)” – my favorite track – lets a fun chorus drift over the end of a pop song whose main lyrical structures are buried so far down as to be subterranean.
At the end of the day, Sea When Absent is a pleasant record, with depths of sonic detail that could be probed for quite a long time. Some of its shortcomings, however, are also hidden by the broad swath of effects and echoes, leaving a pleasant top over even the songs that misstep.
Final Grade: B+ A fuzzy and atmospheric record that has numerous bright points, but the interesting bits won’t reward you unless you spend a lot of time actively engaged with it. Worth a full listen, but definitely download “MTLOV (Minor Keys)”, “Oh I’m a Wrecker (What to Say to Crazy People)”, “In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry)”, and “Double Dutch”.
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