A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Sea When Absent

A Sunny Day in Glasgow
Sea When Absent
23 June 2014
Lefse

4.5 stars out of 5

 

Supremely noisy dream-popsters A Sunny Day in Glasgow return for their fourth LP, Sea When Absent. The album sees them moving still further into Balearic pop, gradually drifting away from their fifth-period His Name Is Alive sound-alike beginnings. While there are some less noisy tracks here (the single “Crushin’,” for example), part of the ASDiG aesthetic is that there is no empty space: every last nook and cranny is filled with sonic hi-jinx, usually the weirder the better. However, regardless of how many auditory digressions one encounters during the course of one of their songs, ASDiG never build arrangements that favour said digressions at the expense of the vocal melody, which is always the core component of all of their tracks.

“In Love with Useless (The Timeless Geometry in the Tradition of Passing)” combines an almost industrial racket with sugar-sweet dream-pop melodies, whereas “MTLOV (Minor Keys)” is pure late-‘80s 4AD bliss. “The Body, It Bends (ペルセポネが帰ってきた!)” aims straight for the ideals created by Brad Laner’s Medicine in the mid-‘90s—angelic vocals laid overtop blissfully overdriven guitars—and hits a bull’s eye. Hidden under the layers of craziness that cover “Golden Waves” is the massive vocal hook of a classic pop/R&B track that would be guaranteed regular rotation on Top 40 radio if it wasn’t for the almost impenetrable nature of its aural textures (them teens be all “Whaaaaaa?”).

Sea When Absent is a triumph. While Animal Collective have been grabbing all the attention and collecting all the accolades (and deservedly so) for their freakishly complex pop records, A Sunny Day in Glasgow have been quietly going about creating their own version of the genre, and with this record they have perfected it. Not to be missed.

reviewed by Richard Krueger