Sonny & The Sunsets - Sonny & The Sunsets '2021

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. The Lonely Men
02. Earl & His Girl
03. Ring My Bell
04. Driftin
05. Ride the Dark Trail
06. Love Obsession
07. Just Hangin Out by Myself
08. Keep Talkin Bout You
09. Palm Reader
10. Im a Leaker
11. Im a Dog
12. The Letter


“It was before Covid, I had this big free empty studio in the hills, I was
supposed to be painting, that was my initial plan, and I just began making songs
on an old guitar, songs about being alone, songs about failed men, some dark
tales of longing. I was reading some old western paperbacks, and I would go on
these walks in the hills, come inside and write these kind of lonesome country
songs. Then the pandemic began, and everyone was alone now, and it felt like it
had been strangely prescient to write about being alone” Smith speaks
about the birth of this record. It sounds like its part of a genre that should
have happened: a sixties teen country music that merged with sixties pop. New
Day with New Possibilities, the latest country offering by Sonny & the Sunsets,
is clearly a companion piece to the cult loved third Sunsets release Longtime
Companion, the laid back country record which marked the beginning of the
Sunsets as an explorative project and not just locked into one sound. New Day
With New Possibilities joins with a kind of Michael Hurley home grown sound but
also leaning into Chelsea Girls baroque strings sound as on Driftin’ and
The Lonely Men. Pedal Steel maestro Joe Goldmark lifts the record into Doug Sahm
and Buck Owens territory. As much as the music ushers in a laid-back country
feeling, the lyrics are where this album depart. Lonely Men, a Bill Calahan-ish
dry observational take, is a searing damnation of broken men who cannot find the
capacity to fully love. Lyrically Smith sets the goals high, Earl and His Girl
and Ride the Dark Trail both sound like William Burroughs wrote a Louis Lamour
style Western paperback: Looks like I’m fat but I’m tough as new
rubber, I heard you chose your last rancho cause he’s rough, But, I am
rougher, My boots may be full of mud, I have no bullets for my gun, But if you
want to come, We can ride the trail together a love poem of sorts, with subtle
connects the song to the late David Berman. Heartbreak is my obsession/I teach
the school of rejection...I’m on the board of depression/and I’m
up for re-election, he sings during Love Obsession, lyrics that sound like they
could have sailed out of Hank Williams. “I didn’t make any
paintings at the studio, the time I was at the studio just turned into music,
music, music, and these empty canvasses just sat in a corner, which is great,
which is perfect. Seems like when I set out to do something really specific, it
just fails to start, and I realize my ego isn’t really steering
things… stuff comes out from the deep inside and knocks me around and
tells me who’s really in charge , re-orients me

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