Connecticut indie rock band sundots release their second album `On The Quay` this month. It was under the name sundots that vocalist and guitarist Drew Collins initially released his music. These days, Sundots is a band that includes guitarist Jake Fucci, bassist Austin Traver, guitar and synth player Teo Hernandez, and drummer Nick Restivo and `On The Quay` is a much more collaborative release.
We are introduced to the album via `Birthday Song` a gently melodic rhythmic offering with a kind of hazy guitar riff underpinning the track. It branches off with a dreamy musical interlude before returning on it`s original wistful path. I read that `Grassy Lawn` has been a fan favourite in live sets and was influenced by a story featured in Ian McEwan’s First Love, Last Rites that centres around a doomed summer romance. There`s a core vocal with additional harmonies floating over and at times throughout the main theme. Another fairly illusory listen.
`Moon, Moon` is another almost imaginary piece and maybe the accompanying music reflects the title with it`s gentle celestial feel. There`s a kind of iridescence to `Getting Away` which has a has a shimmer and sparkle.
`Idols` begins quietly but becomes more robust as it progresses, a number that seems to be about avoiding the devotion or worship of deities. It really takes off in the latter part before easing back and fading out. We have in `Distraction` a song about unrequited love which was inspired by David Foster Wallace’s debut novel The Broom of the System. The song has a pretty upbeat vibe although the theme maybe suggests it shouldn`t.
The longest song on the album `Hazard` feels like a surreal journey or voyage and quite introspective at times as we float along whereas `Someone Else’s Song` takes lyrical cues from the last story in James Joyce’s collection Dubliners, “The Dead,” a moving meditation on love, memory, mortality, and the emotional paralysis of middle-class Dublin society. It had a stop start quite angular texture.
`By The Water` has an aquatic mood and exudes soothing or ethereal tones. There`s a much more laid back recurring beat to `Unfolded` which becomes fairly hypnotic.
After its initial quiet introduction, `This Life` becomes quite fast paced displaying a sense of movement or progress as it evolves. The final cut is the strangely titled `Kgkgkg`. On social media platforms repetitive consonant clusters are often used to signal excitement, a playful laugh, an awkward reaction, or a light-hearted mood without a literal translation. Here the composition is more dreamlike with a preliminary solo venture before the rest of the band join in to flesh this submission out.
`On The Quay` is an interesting offering and will need a few plays before it begins to hit home.
It has a gentle, tender, and deep texture with words like unreal, illusory, dreamy, ruminative, reflective, and thoughtful that come to mind as it seeps into your subconscious.
Rating 8/10
