Sunshine
Necromance: Digital Urban Icons
Day After
It’d be easy to merely pass Sunshine off as retro-futurist poseurs; hell, it would’ve been even easier to pass them off nearly five years ago during their comparatively meager GSL days. But that would be a heinous move either way, indeed, as the Czech trio have aged extremely well as of late, 1999’s beyond-brilliant Velvet Suicide and now this, the Necromance follow-up, positing them as leaders of a certain loosely-defined/grouped Now Wave collective: sassy-pants modern bands who bow in homage to 20 years of post-punk by moving it ever forward into Y2K, no wry glances-back-in-irony in sight. Necromance: Digital Urban Icons finds Sunshine sallying forth in a similar (high) fashion as its predecessor, locating fondly familiar influences yet placing them into a hallowed trajectory that•s all their own, one that nods as much to The Birthday Party as Public Image Limited, Scientists as The Sweet, Rozz-era Christian Death as Movement-era New Order. But “retread”? Fuck NO. Sunshine are ace songsmiths, their compositions sharply ingraining upon first listen while holding down a vaguely Batcaved rock power, and Necromance is no different, perhaps moving them out of the garage and into the digital age like its extended namesake, Moogs and Korgs circling around the glam happenings more often than the effects-drenched guitars do. Difficult to gauge the LP’s aftereffects, as Velvet Suicide immediately sounded both decades ahead and behind all else, but Necromance: Digital Urban Icons could hardly be considered a slump.
Day After, PO Box 153, 35201 AS, Czech Republic, http://www.dayafter.cz
