Golden Sun EP
Golden Sun
7.5-out-of-10
Salt Lake City's Golden Sun describe themselves as alternative indie funk rock, funk being the intriguing word there. This melodic four piece definitely fills the alt indie rock bill, but funk? I'm still not sure.
Compared to their 2011 release, Wine Country, the Golden Sun EP offers a large progression in terms of maturity and sub-genre splitting. This self recorded album also plays a lot with production and effect like fuzzing out drums or vocals, layering guitar melodies and giving the bass more of a rhythm guitar's role on some tracks.
My favorite part of this record has to be the guitar playing. Incorporating heavy distortion with surf rock-esque melodies and not being afraid to throw out some thick chords make for an interesting take on the popular post-rock scene. The melodies themselves, when taken out of context, are rather quite simple, but when surrounded by a similarly moving vocal and the tasteful drumming they really come alive.
Six of the seven songs on this EP are of the urgent variety, but the speed boat is slowed by a wave of reverb on the standout track "Strangers". Drawn out notes and lyrics crash and build of a steady drum, juxtaposed against the technical drumming and fast moving lines of the other tunes. I found another stand out track to be "Wind River".
I think the "funk" tag is a little misplaced, unless the meaning of funk has changed. Some of their jams are definitely funk-y, but I think "awesome" would be a better descriptor.
--SEAN CRAIB-PETKAU
Self Titled
J. Riley Hill
5-out-of-10
This is a very difficult record to deconstruct, I'd say impossible. It's like an elementary school art class, the definition of scatter brained.
The cacophony and discord here make it almost hard to listen to, but things will eventually clear and you think "Gee, this sure is a catchy melody", and suddenly you're deafened by guitar feedback. As the record does progress it seems to focus on a slightly narrower point of an infinite horizon, settling somewhere between 1968 and 1987. As described in his bio, "This post-pop artist draws on so many influences that listing them would become a musical trivia game based on 40 years of rich history." And one of the best features in the album is that it keeps the listener guessing. Well, I was left guessing alright. I wanted to know if an ill fitting tuba was going to appear in this fun acoustic jam or if there would be more experimenting with high volume guitar noise. To say the least I was confused. Combining this many years and styles and genres of music just didn't work for me. It was grade 6, 7, and 8 of Mr. Stewart's music history class condensed into eleven songs.
Now, there were many aspects of this record which I could appreciate. Hill played all 3,452 of the instruments; impressive! His voice was a chameleon as well, suiting whichever styles were being pressed together at that moment, which I thought was pretty cool. I did enjoy "Walking Left of Wanting" very much, as it was well put together but still original.
And I think this brings me to an important question. What is there left to do? Many gallant attempts are made every day to try and bring something fresh to music. Some work out, leading to things like 8-bit chillwave glitch pop, and some don't. I think cramming 40 years of music passed onto one album isn't the way to the new world but all things considered I think this was a very gallant attempt at crossing that ocean.
-- SEAN CRAIB-PETKAU
