Steady Sun
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Living at a time when despondency seems to be the predominant undercurrent, the expression of joy seems almost like an act of defiance. Steady Sun's new album Joy ponders this, among other questions: What if the notion of escapism was reinterpreted as a form of deliberate arrival? Could equanimity be ever-looming by one's side like a benevolent phantom, waiting a lifetime to be acknowledged? Rarely, in the album's dense, color-saturated, undulating nine songs, are these questions asked explicitly. Instead, subversive exuberance is expressed through fuzzed-out slide guitar harmonies lilting over elaborate choral arrangements, and the notion of escape-as-arrival can be felt through the mercurial anomalies in song structure that color the record throughout.
Joy is the culmination of a series of transcontinental trips from primary songwriter Dylan Nowik's Catskill, New York home (an old farmhouse at the site of a former Christian summer camp where the majority of the record's writing took place) to Los Angeles, the album's primary recording location and current home of producer Wayne Gordon, former head engineer of Brooklyn's storied Daptone Records. Within the several-years-long window of the album's creation, Nowik's career as a musician has evolved: his recent credits include serving as the primary guitarist on Clairo's grammy-nominated third album Charm, two live performances as an accompanying guitarist on Jimmy Fallon, and the blessing of Indie-Folk ambassador Angel Olsen via a cover of one of his songs from his other group, Camp Saint Helene.
Throughout all of this, the desire to create something exuberant and true-to-craft guided Nowik and his compatriots through the finish line in creating Joy. The record is at once a celebration of influences, as well as an act of deliberate irreverence. In “Rosie”, Steady Sun blends equal-parts Floyd and David Crosby, while the lyrics warn a soon-to-be-born child of the beauties and terrors it will encounter; the ambitious medley, “Sundries”, recalls the neo-psychedelia of MGMT's sprawling “Siberian Breaks”, and “Little Death” sounds as if Terrance Mckenna's DMT Elves finally discovered Madlib within the astral void.
Amid the technicolor swirl, the Sisyphean weight of life can nonetheless be felt, especially in the album's understatedly potent closer, “Sadness In The Way”. The record is by no means a denial of suffering; instead, it serves as a compelling meditation on the myriad states of being, transmuted into something intriguing, otherworldly, and indeed, joyful.
Living at a time when despondency seems to be the predominant undercurrent, the expression of joy seems almost like an act of defiance. Steady Sun's new album Joy ponders this, among other questions: What if the notion of escapism was reinterpreted as a form of deliberate arrival? Could equanimity be ever-looming by one's side like a benevolent phantom, waiting a lifetime to be acknowledged? Rarely, in the album's dense, color-saturated, undulating nine songs, are these questions asked explicitly. Instead, subversive exuberance is expressed through fuzzed-out slide guitar harmonies lilting over elaborate choral arrangements, and the notion of escape-as-arrival can be felt through the mercurial anomalies in song structure that color the record throughout.
Joy is the culmination of a series of transcontinental trips from primary songwriter Dylan Nowik's Catskill, New York home (an old farmhouse at the site of a former Christian summer camp where the majority of the record's writing took place) to Los Angeles, the album's primary recording location and current home of producer Wayne Gordon, former head engineer of Brooklyn's storied Daptone Records. Within the several-years-long window of the album's creation, Nowik's career as a musician has evolved: his recent credits include serving as the primary guitarist on Clairo's grammy-nominated third album Charm, two live performances as an accompanying guitarist on Jimmy Fallon, and the blessing of Indie-Folk ambassador Angel Olsen via a cover of one of his songs from his other group, Camp Saint Helene.
Throughout all of this, the desire to create something exuberant and true-to-craft guided Nowik and his compatriots through the finish line in creating Joy. The record is at once a celebration of influences, as well as an act of deliberate irreverence. In “Rosie”, Steady Sun blends equal-parts Floyd and David Crosby, while the lyrics warn a soon-to-be-born child of the beauties and terrors it will encounter; the ambitious medley, “Sundries”, recalls the neo-psychedelia of MGMT's sprawling “Siberian Breaks”, and “Little Death” sounds as if Terrance Mckenna's DMT Elves finally discovered Madlib within the astral void.
Amid the technicolor swirl, the Sisyphean weight of life can nonetheless be felt, especially in the album's understatedly potent closer, “Sadness In The Way”. The record is by no means a denial of suffering; instead, it serves as a compelling meditation on the myriad states of being, transmuted into something intriguing, otherworldly, and indeed, joyful.
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