Sunday’s Best
The Californian
Polyvinyl
Well, they’re on Polyvinyl, which is almost enough for me to give them a big fat stamp of approval. In light of their label choice, do I even have to listen to the CD to know that it’s going to be a slab of intelligent, forward-thinking, alternative goodness? No, but I decided to anyway.
This disc is Californian through and through – definately a sun-drenched road trip CD. It’s at once too cute and too grown-up to be emo: hook-laden, richly arranged and about as sing-a-long as you can get. There’s enough rock in all the right places to keep everything moving along with power, and some smatterings of introspective mellowing-out (the sublime “Don’t Let it Fade”) in case anyone was at risk of getting slightly nauseated by the cheeriness (which I doubt they would be, as Sunday’s Best pull it off too damn well for it to be cloying). For a sohpomore effort, The Californian is about as cohesive as it could be, but none of the band’s spontaneous creative vibe is lost. And that’s what really sets Sunday’s Best apart from the thousands of other CDs in this vein – the pure, unpretentious unity and richly painted emotion that oozes from the group’s songs.
Polyvinyl Records: http://www.polyvinylrecords.com
