If you have time and, say, unlimited resources, getting lost in the creation of a new record, it’s easy. In 1987, U2 claimed that for the recording of The Joshua Tree, they set themselves to have limited resources as some of their most well-known songs so far were composed and played using, to quote The Edge, “A guitar with just two strings,” for instance.
A decade later, having better equipment and the possibilities of electronics and not setting boundaries as to what they could do, they got lost in the making of POP, a brilliant work on the other hand. And all that, counting on the constraints they had in their previous work Zooropa, recorded in between gigs of their spectacular ‘93 tour of Europe. On that one, they kept things fresh and spontaneous, and it was a creative triumph by all accounts.
U2 have blamed their own lack of skill in those cases, admitting they struggle even with the most basic stuff. But what happens when you have that musicianship and almost endless possibilities?
It seems to me that L.A.’s wonder trio ASHRR faced that question at one moment or another during the creation of their sophomore record Sunshine Low. The first news on the record was the release of a single of the title track, way back in the summer of 2022, when the band was label-less, but already with a clear image in their minds as to how the record should sound.
Their urban English post-punk roots were given a twist and more American influences were heard in those first hints of the new work.
Finally, in 2023 the band signed to Ralph Lawson’s 20/20 Vision Recordings label in the U.K., and both visions – the band’s and the label’s – were similar enough to take further the urban, summery, nocturnal concept of the record.
In the age of streaming, it feels like sequencing a record is useless, but when you know what you’re doing, it still makes complete and utter sense. We can feel it in the latest works by Beth Gibbons, Ride, Arab Strap and, probably, in the forthcoming new record by The Cure. And it’s no exception in Sunshine Low.
The record starts with the trio of most dynamic songs, “Please Don’t Stop The Rain”, “Different Kind Of Life” (QRO review) and “Sway” (QRO review) and then the tempo relaxes a bit for the two last songs of side A, the bilingual “Deux Sons” and the breezy and dreamy swirls of “Sun Song”.
Side A is the sunny, luminous side, and side B can well be the other side of the coin. “Fizzy” (QRO review), the funky track “No Garden”, and the warmth of the title track “Sunshine Low” start proceedings before the sensual “What’s Been Turning You On” (QRO review) and the closing track “Koolove” leave us in a state of pleasantness.
Being this an only-vinyl release, the band wanted to reward the fans who buy the record with the download of four other tracks, the tense “Lion”, the dreamy “Something New” and the dancey “The Glow”, plus a remix of “Koolove”.
This sequencing guarantees that the record is relentless from start to finish, even if it’s not a frantic LP, and that the amount of work put into each song also makes them work apart from the sequence.
And this is the great aspect of this record: it can work on many levels. You can play it loud in an open space or the intimacy of a room; you can dance to it or you can spend hours discovering melodies and details on each song; you can sing the lyrics or mimic all the riffs and lines; you can focus on the studio release or going to watch the band live and see how they translate all those layers onto the stage to discover yet another side of the songs. And the list goes on.
The secret to all this? Multi-instrumentalist Josh Charles summed it up in a video: “We’re not afraid to experiment or play or say anything we want because we respect each other’s artistry, because we all in the band come from different backgrounds and finding common ground and being able to mix them coherently into a song and a record, is what makes us unique, I believe.”
With all this, this record is entering straight away this select group of records in 2024 which prove that in spite of all the ways listening to music has changed in recent years, musicianship and taking the time to value and understand the record have to be in the centre of their music experience.
