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Summer Palace
Rating: 5.9 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
By Rick Sieber
Like a psych-pop Herman’s Hermits, Sunny Day Sets Fire plays a tastefully smooth, b-list variant of their chosen style. By clarifying the production and toning down the weirdness of the genre’s standard bearers (Flaming Lips, Of Montreal, etc.), these multi-national Londoners end up with the sort of pleasingly gooey confection that even the mums and dads are bound to love. As befits their rather cumbersome moniker, the band’s debut is an exceedingly sunny affair, overflowing with cutesy upbeat anthems that float breezily along without ever really taking root. It’s the sort of album where all of the songs are catchy, but it’s the annoyingly catchy ones (“Teenagers Talking”, “Smallest Heart on Earth”) that get stuck in your head while the real winners (“Stranger”, “Brainless”) tend to get lost in the shuffle. The arrangements are thoughtful, the performances are energetic, and when the band starts to loosen up and freak out a bit (as on the delightfully wacky “Map of the World”), it really seems like the band could be onto something (or even ON something). Too often, however, it feels like the band could use just a little more psych with their pop. (IAMSOUND)
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