A Sunny Day In Glasgow-Sea When Absent-(LEFSE065-2)-CD-FLAC-2014-...

a r t i s t :: A Sunny Day In Glasgowt i t l e :: Sea When Absentl a b e l :: Lefse Recordsg e n r e :: Alternativee n c o d e r :: FLAC 1.2.1 -8 -Vs i z e :: 314.8MB tracklist2 In Love With Useless The Timeless 5:07Geometry In The Tradition Of Passing7 Never Nothing It's Alright It's Ok]) 5:04Crazy People releasenotesWhat would shoegaze sound like if it had its eyes on the sky? Over theof several albums, the intercontinental six-piece A Sunny Day in Glasgow havebeen toying with an answer to that riddle. Their latest and best record, SeaWhen Absent, has an atmospheric, bleeding-watercolor quality that makes itsound a little bit like a My Bloody Valentine record if the moodiness andpensiveness were replaced with a feeling of almost violently explosive joyBeneath dense textures, melodies pop like fireworks. Like their previousalbums, Sea When Absent doesn't sound like much else out there; genre tags areonly worth mentioning to show how they don't quite fit. It sometimes soundslike a psych record, made not by the kids smoking up behind the bleachers butthe most devoted members of the glee clubSince their freewheeling 2007 debut Scribble Mural Comic Journal, A Sunny Dayin Glasgow have flown under the radar, apart from any discernible trendsUntil now, their greatest achievement has been their criminally under-heard2009 album Ashes Grammar, a panoramic collection of pastel-soft dream-pop thatmoved fluidly between ambient passages and hazy but immaculately structuredpop songs like "Failure" and "Passionate Introverts Dinosaurs)". Actuallypassionate introverts" is a pretty good way to describe at least one memberof the band: the guitarist and ostensible leader Ben Daniels, abiostatistician who moved in 2009 from Philadelphia to Australia. "I am prettyantisocial," he said recently, when asked if he still felt connected to thePhiladelphia scene. "I know that if I were in Philly I'd still mostly behanging out in my apartment reading books and playing with synthesizers." Thatmakes sense: Even in its most ambitiously full-screen moments, A Sunny Day inGlasgow's music has a certain bedroom-pop feel. Community often makes forgreat art, but music as unique and unclassifiable as ASDIG's usually springsfrom somebody shutting himself in his room and trusting his own weird way ofseeing the worldAshes Grammar was a sprawling and occasionally drifting record, but Sea WhenAbsent finds the band tightening up their sound just enough, bringing theinterlocking vocals of their two singers, Jen Goma and Annie Fredrickson, tothe forefront of the mix. For the first time, they've brought on an outsideproducer, Jeff Zeigler War on Drugs, Kurt Vile), and though he's helpedclarify their sound, that doesn't come at the expense of complexity. Each songon Sea When Absent structured like a maze: it's easyand dizzying in the bestwayto get lost in its twists and turns. "The Things They Do to Me" begins asweightless, space-rock reverie and then abruptly makes a hard left into a morepastoral earth-bound soundscape; "The Body, It Bends" pivots between anunassuming acoustic folk tune and a song that ought to have its own laserlight show at a planetarium; a towering riff crashes down in the middle ofBoys Turn Into Girls Initiation Rites)", sudden as a summer storm. Thesetonal shifts are so dynamic that they sound fresh on every listen; you couldhear these songs 100 times and they'd still find ways to catch by surpriseMusic that overflows with so many ideas runs the risk of sounding clutteredbut Sea When Absent manages to avoid that pitfall. And that's prettyimpressive, given the disjointed way it was recorded: The six members of theband Daniels, Goma, Fredrickson, drummer Adam Herndon, bassist Ryan Newmyerand multi-instrumentalist Josh Meakim) are now scattered across Australia, NewYork, and Philadelphia, and the album came together as they sent each othersnippets of songs, with creative decisions made via lengthy group emailchains. The result is an album structured in layers with many overlappingideas, as fragmentary and luminous as light through a prism. The sweetlysingsong-y "MTLOV Minor Keys)" has the feel of a round, with Goma andFredrickson's voices braided into rich harmonies. Then there's the stone-coldgorgeous "In Love With Useless The Timeless Geometry in the Tradition ofPassing)", which flirts with moments of dissonance and glitchiness thepre-chorus sounds like nothing so much as a poorly connected Skype call) onlyto make the moments of sudden clarity feel that much more satisfyingWhen A Sunny Day in Glasgow put out "In Love With Useless" as a single, theyalso released a lyric video for itwhich is kind of funny, because they're notexactly a "lyrics band." Granted, they've pushed the vocals higher into themix this time around, but it's usually next to impossible to understand whatGoma and Fredrickson are singing. Not that it matters; ASDIG's music is moreabout the experience of getting blissfully lost in a feeling, and if theirmusic were too literal or word-based it might take you out of that odddreamlike stateWhen Ashes Grammar came out," Daniels recently recalled, "I thought it was areally loud rock record for a year, and then a friend was like, 'This isreally chilled-out and ambient.'" With Sea When Absent, A Sunny Day in Glasgowhave finally made that loud rock recordfull of crashing percussion andscreaming guitarsbut without abandoning the ambiance that makes them sodistinct. Sea When Absent has the quality of one of those spectacularly brightsummer days when they color in everything seems a little over-saturated, andit induces the same dizzy, woozy feeling you get after staring directly at thesun. Play it loud enough to see spots A_Sunny_Day_In_Glasgow-Sea_When_Absent-LEFSE065-2)-CD-FLAC-2014-k4Please Keep it For Continue Seeding and Help Others To Get Download