Editor of The Word magazine and former host of The Old Grey Whistle Test David Hepworth once attested that the band he would most have liked to have been in was Crowded House. Three close friends travelling the world in their own shambolic, farcical good-natured way on the back of music that was both commercially successful and beautiful.
Sleepy Sun look like a band it would be enormous fun to be in – perhaps, as one watches them grin and saunter about the stage feeding off the energy of each other much more than the sparse audience, more so than those Antipodeans.
Sleepy Sun, however, are not about to trouble the charts any time soon. The Santa Cruz sextet hit the jackpot for psychedelic rockers when they were picked up by the ATP label, affording them instant credibility, and meaning that after this relatively low-key date in the freezing winter gloom of Switzerland’s financial centre, they headed to Butlins in Minehead for the hallowed cool of the ATP festival, and London shows supporting Dinosaur Jr’s J.Mascis.
Sleepy Sun make bluesy, heavy rock that is punctuated by a softness that proves them sixties throwbacks at heart: all of The Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, The Allman Brothers and plugged-in Neil Young are hinted at tonight. Jefferson Airplane are also an obvious influence, and not just because of the presence of a charismatic and alluring female singer in the shape of Rachel Williams. ‘Golden Artifact’ could have been an outtake from Surrealistic Pillow in its wistful, mild folk-tinged melancholy.
The presence of a strong female vocalist and those occasional soft moments also aligns them with Canadians Black Mountain, and it may interest some to know that Sleepy Sun benefitted from the production expertise of Colin Stewart, who the band ventured up to Vancouver to record with for their excellent debut album Embrace. Stewart polished up Black Mountain’s In The Future, and he has exceeded even that with Sleepy Sun. For Embrace is a sublime record, adding melody and articulacy to the drone-heavy US psychedelic scene.
That’s not to say Sleepy Sun don’t nail down a few huge riffs now and then. ‘No Age’ and ‘Sleepy Sun’ are thunderous tonight and offer countless deviations from their recorded guises into experimental territory that is yet another impressive weapon in the arsenal of this band, even if the ‘improvisation’ is steady and a little monotonous at times.
The band are using this tour to test new material for a new album that promises to be released next summer. Those songs seem meandering and looser, with more pronounced juxtapositions of soft and moody with loud and tempestuous. Gone, to an extent, are the simpler song structures of Embrace, heralding in a new obtuseness that makes them all the more an ATP sort of band.
Most persuasive though is that camaraderie. Bret Constantino may act the role of frontman, but Williams matches him as both singer and court jester on stage, and each member is allowed breathing space to cultivate their own off-the-cuff contributions to the show: guitarist Evan Reiss is a particularly imaginative musician. Such constant positivity and friendship is going to become boring and make relationships implode eventually, making Sleepy Sun at this precise moment in time all the more adorable a proposition.
