Acid Love

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Hail Voyagers! What a treat we've in store for your week's end. Taking multiple continents by storm, via ceaseless vagabonding, (true road warriors them,) we have a live set by San Fran' -via Santa Cruz, psych n' rollers Sleepy Sun!

They came through my city mere days before the High Holy Day and I've the soundboard recording to enjoy at will or whim. I think you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

SF Weekly wrote this exactly one week prior to my seeing them and I couldn't agree more; and, if the rule holds they must be bordering on unbelievable now.

While I believe in the right to hold and publish opinion on their latest album, Fever, it is my opinion Grayson Currin gets it wrong as published in Pitchfork. Notably this:

"...Thing is, you've probably heard all of this before, via Zeppelin, Mountain, Sabbath, Pentangle, or any of the thousands of bands that have cited those acts as influences. Sleepy Sun's psychedelic rock is of a cut-and-paste variety, where a few decades of platitudes are snipped from their sources and simply rearranged."

I'm left wondering how many times G. Currin has actually seen Led Zeppelin, Mountain, Black Sabbath, or Pentangle...? Are any of them a touring concern anymore? While I hear bits of the above in the album I decline the leap to paint-by-numbers influence-repeating going on in within the grooves. I tend to agree more with Skwerl's summation, at the end of this review on Antiquiet:

"...Approach this album as cynically as you wish; as cynically as I did if you’d like. It will surprise you. Sleepy Sun gets absolutely right what too many bands in their genre get wrong: Heterogeneity. These musicians communicate, but it’s always a new angle to the conversation, and there’s always a point. They go down into the rabbit holes, but there’s always someone holding a string leading back out. It’s the opposite of the tiresome excessive hedonism so common among the rest of the atmospheric hippie jam-happy noisemakers."

Currin, in my view, takes the all-too-easy Shakespearean way out, via the tired "a rose by any other name..." route; Skwerl goes Antoine de Saint-Exupery on us via "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

Indulge this rose and tell me how their gardens grow...

Sleepy Sun is in Europe for one more week of shows before returning state-side for the All Tomorrow's Parties appearance on Sept. 4th; then a slew of dates through the US until Sept. 26th. They may be near you.

* 2010 Tour Poster, art by Alan Forbes

My sincere thanks to Chris, Sleepy Sun's tour manager for his mighty assist in obtaining this soundboard recording. He proved a gentleman at every turn.