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Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts.
The lineup: Dane Orr (instruments) and Anna Wise (vocals).
The background: Sonnymoon’s music is woozy, magical, mysterious, hypnotic, quixotic. Other words that occurred while we were listening to their self-titled album, released this autumn, included: squelchy, fantastic, phantasmic, plasmic, plastic, spasmic, orgasmic. It is liquid and loose, unconventional and unorthodox. It jerks and juts out at ridiculous angles, but it can also be smooth and easy on the ear. At various points it will seem as though you are listening to an electronica record, at other times to an RB one, a jazz one, an avant-garde one, even a pop one. Some of the songs will sound like all of the above, at once, while others will make you wonder whether you are listening to a brand new, as yet unnamed genre.
Their SoundCloud says they come from Earth but they are out of this world. Actually, the two members of Sonnymoon met at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, where Dane Orr was studying saxophone and Anna Wise was studying singing. This is the third time in recent weeks that we have featured former alumni of Berklee – members of Big Black Delta and King were attendees, although even their proggy synth-pop and psychedelic soul weren’t quite as free-flowing and far-out as this – their standout qualities are Orr’s individualistic approach to computers and keyboards, and Wise’s vocals, which are more of a series of cute hiccups than anything that could conventionally be termed “singing”. There are some clues as to how the album sounds from the label that will be releasing it: Plug Research, the LA imprint responsible for Flying Lotus’s debut album, plus releases from Dntel, Daedalus, John Tejada, Thomas Fehlman and Bilal.
Some of the songs on the album rank alongside the finest we’ve heard all year. Greatness is the first piece of music we’ve heard in a while that sounds as though it is familiar with the work of early-80s punk-jazz combo Rip Rig and Panic. Instruments come and go, and there’s a bit where cooing gives way to whispering, which is a delight. ∞ is an odyshape of a title appropriate for music that shimmers, stalls, slants sideways, skips and skedaddles, goes skew-whiff, and generally stops short of being a song with a discernible melody while still being more pop than anything else. Then an irresistible sitar impinges on this idiosyncratic influx of iridescence. Kali is loping cool jazz, like Manhattan Transfer on Mandrax, or the xx in a Soho bar in 1958 surrounded by beatniks. Think the girl from Ipanema if she read Pitchfork. It’s slovenly and/or intricately constructed – we can’t decide which. Possibly both. Or neither. We are not alone in our estimation of its strangeness: “Kali sounds like Alice Coltrane’s rhythm section borrowed the Tardis and popped by the studio,” wrote one blogger. See?
Watersboiled is within bleeping distance of Micachu and her Shapes and recalls a dream we once had of post-punk girl group the Raincoats before we actually heard them. It features Wise repeating the phrase “Make sure your water’s boiled” over weird sci-fi synth sounds and not much else. Good advice, that. Flit Fleet Float is almost onomatopoeic, although the ratio of flitting and fleeting to floating is distinctly balanced in favour of the former. Mild Rumpus is an appropriate title for a lot of this stuff now that we think of it, while Nothing Thought is clicky and glitchy, its hip-hop techniques failing to disguise a pop lusciousness. There’s even a song called Universal Appeal. Sonnymoon don’t quite have that, but they have made our day, if not week.
The buzz: “A hip-hop-laced journey into space” – Pot Holes in My Blog.
The truth: It’s a multivalent delight.
Most likely to: Flit and float.
Least likely to: Panic.
What to buy: Sonnymoon is released by Plug Research in October.
File next to: AlunaGeorge, Micachu and the Shapes, Rip Rig and Panic, Neneh Cherry.
Links: facebook.com/Sonnymoonmusic.
Friday’s new band: Yuno.