After listening to Age of the Sun, I feel safe making an assumption: The Bill Doss (formerly of the Olivia Tremor Control) really likes the Beatles, the sun, and psychedelic drugs. And with good reason. In small doses, all three are great things, liable to cheer you up, or at the very least, illuminate a situation in a way uniquely their own. But too much of any of these things can be a problem. Too much sun will give you cancer. Too much Beatles will leave your mind a mess of muddled harmonies, celebrity worship and lame conspiracy theories. Too many psychedelic drugs will turn you into a self-obsessed freak (like, say, Neu!'s Klaus Dinger).
Too much. This is a problem that the Bill Doss has. There's lots of good stuff on Age of the Sun, the new album from his new-ish band the (ahem) Sunshine Fix. It's just that sometimes, there's a bit too much of it.
Take that sun, for example. It's in the name of the band; it's in the title of the album; it's one of the first and last words sung on the album; and more than half the songs appropriate it as a theme. Now, doubtless, the sun plays an important role in all of our lives (the loyal vampire portion of Pitchfork's readership notwithstanding), but this sort of obsessiveness is just plain unhealthy. Unhealthy and tiresome. Just as a bright, sunny day can come as a slap in the face if you're in the wrong mood, so, too, can this constant elaboration on the same theme get a little irritating.
The music, on the other hand, doesn't, which comes as something of a surprise. It's not everyday that I, a bitter, wearied critic, stumble upon pop music varied enough that it not only grabs my attention, but also hangs onto it. Granted, there's nothing on Age of the Sun that's quite up to par with the work of Doss' former bandmate (Circulatory System's Will Cullen Hart), but then, little more than constant disappointment can come from expecting every record to be a masterpiece.
But Age of the Sun does have some very strong moments. Like the two wobbly, distorted guitars that do battle on the instrumental track "Inside the Nebula" while crackling static and a sturdy bassline keep time. As this short number nears its end, a simple piano melody lingers in the background, before everything cuts out, then back in, then back out, then back in, then out for good. If that bit of piano sounds familiar, it's because it's playing the same faux-ragtime bit that served as a bridge between "Everything is Waking"-- one of the most OTC-sounding songs on the album, replete with a melancholy refrain with vocal harmonizing and guitar riffs right off The White Album-- and "Digging to China," one of the more straightforward tracks here.
The Sunshine Fix is a bit more straightforward than OTC or Circulatory System. Sure, lots of the trademarks remain-- songs linked together by stray musical digressions, short bits of strangeness between songs, recurring singsong melodies, etc. But there's more focus here on the pop than the psychedelic. That's not to say Age of the Sun isn't without its out-there psychedelic moments, just that Doss is more interested in layering piles of horns, guitars, bass, drums, strings, organs, harmonizing vocals and feedback on top of each other for that glorious wall of sound effect than he is in twisting your mind around in circles from chasing after stray bits of hallucinatory noise gone awry.
Ultimately, this is a pretty solid effort, especially from the man often assumed to be the lesser half of the OTC equation. Sure, there are moments that get annoying-- like "Le Roi Soleil," which ends the album by stretching one syllable's vocal harmony over the course of twenty minutes. And sure, the whole ordeal could benefit from a bit of thematic variety. But there are also lots of strong moments, like the way the simple acoustic number, "Cycles of Time," serves as a breather following the swarming grandiose of "72 Years," Age of the Sun's grand finale (provided you discount "Le Roi").
Age of the Sun may not be the defining achievement of pop music that Black Foliage was, and it may not reach quite the heights of his counterpart Hart's finest efforts, but it's still one of the stronger straight-up pop albums I've heard in a while. At his worst, Doss is prone to over-indulgence. But at his best, he proves himself a more-than-capable songwriter and arranger. If he ever learns to respect his limitations, why, there's no telling what he might achieve.
