The Society of Rockets used to be known as the Shimmer Kids Underpop Association, and beneath that banner this California ensemble produced an impressively expansionist take on woozy homemade psych-pop. Unfortunately, the Shimmer Kids timed their arrival a couple of years too late to climb aboard the Elephant 6 and Terrastock gravy train, and though records like 2002's The Natural Riot showed great promise, by that point it seemed most listeners were too Olivia Tremor Controlled-out for the group to really enter their audience's collective forebrain.
In 2003, after the Shimmer Kids' accomplished The Book of Mirrors EP sank with barely a ripple, the group again assembled in the recording studio, but this time they found their new material to be such a drastic change from their previous work that the result was a reconfigured line-up with the new Society of Rockets name. Gone are the Shimmer Kids' grandiose paisley epics, stuffed to the rafters with dense layers of oddball instrumentation. Instead Sunset Homes reveals a much more sober, pared-back vision of the group as waylaid cosmic cowboys singing around the campfire in a Greyhound station parking lot.
An about-face this severe is obviously not made without some risk. Aside from the crystalline vocals of Joshua Babcock, there's virtually nothing here that even the most eagle-eared listener will recognize from the group's former incarnation. And by scaling their arrangements down so significantly, they've placed much more importance upon the quality of their playing and songwriting. Thankfully, however, the songs here are strong enough bear up under the harsh light of day, and on Sunset Homes the Society of Rockets sound as though they've finally staked claim to a sound they can truly make their own.
The opening "O, Sing Transformer" attempts to make the segue to the new land as comfortable as possible, as Babcock's voice and piano are carried skyward by a lysergic haze of squeezebox and organ. But that gentle reverie ends abruptly with the ramshackle On the Beach stomp of the following "Untitled", on which drummer Mike Evans provides the mule kick necessary to fully introduce the group's revamped sound.
In another break with the band's lo-fi history, Sunset Homes benefits from an extremely crisp analog production job by Mark Erickson. In the past, the band's predilection for exotic instrumentation would sometimes result in stray accordions or sleigh bells getting completely buried in an amorphous mash. Here instead, every element is rationed more judiciously, and in Erickson's pristine mix each musician's contribution is made that much more potent. The addition of Lorelei David's theremin to the Stones-y "Too Many Thorns In Your Bed of Roses" gives the song a satisfyingly precarious wobble, while the inclusion of ingredients like cello, melodica or various spacey sound effects help keep tracks like "The Flood" or the lovely "Never No Fences" from ever descending into rote alt-country traditionalism.
Perhaps the biggest departure for the group is in their lyrics. Where Shimmer Kids' lyrics were a day-glo pastiche of imagery from comic books and the paranoid sci-fi of William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick, here their words are concerned with the resolutely earthbound themes of road weariness, hangovers, and broken friendships. Though at times this newfound realism finds the group nestling uncomfortably close to cliche (particularly on the skimpy album-closing piano pop of "Let's Make a Scene") it does force Babcock and company to find new, more honest ways to personalize their voice. In a manner reminiscent of such albums as Wilco's Being There or My Morning Jacket's The Tennessee Fire, Sunset Homes contains the sound of a band just beginning to tap into their full potential, as well as the realization that any attempt to map out this group's future possible destinations will likely prove futile.
