As contradictory as their respective subcultures might seem, punk rock and folk music share an awful lot of common ground. It might be unbearably weird to imagine lanky, bearded tea-drinkers communing with pogo-ready mohawkers, but both sonic traditions wholeheartedly embrace DIY, music-for-the-folks ideology. Both arm themselves with mailing lists, grassroots promotions, and homemade CDs. Both hock silk-screened, handcrafted wares from heavily stickered cardboard boxes. And both fight hard (usually with bumper stickers) for political, cultural, and social acceptance. Somehow, sadcore heroine Shannon Wright has managed, over the course of five solo records, to confidently plant one foot in each of these genres, skipping from muted, earnest troubadour to raucous, pissed-off squealer. Yet, rather than sounding like a neo-DiFranco, Wright ends up forging her own self-expressive format, churning out sparse, plucky bits of dissonant guitar rock.
Over the Sun, Wright's fifth effort since splitting from indie-poppers Crowsdell, is a sprawling collage of distraught lyrics, buzzing guitar, mellotron echo, and Wright's incomparable wheeze. With a voice that seems lodged in perpetual despair, Wright whisper-yowls her way through nine tortured tracks, and each of her tiny exhalations seems borne of some kind of gruesome emotional or physical ailment, strained, fiery, and sometimes oddly quiet. Opener "With Closed Eyes" starts with fuzzy mellotron, before promptly descending into a spare guitar-and-drums assault. Wright chants her poetry heroically, spitting declarations in perfect time.
While Wright's songwriting is well-honed, it's almost impossible to move past her wounded vocals and into the meat of her compositions; highlight "You'll Be the Death", despite its "wretch like me" admissions, comes closest to showcasing Wright's other skills, with a distant drumbeat and some gentle guitar picking backing up a haunting, spectral vocal melody. "Plea" serves to solidify Wright's moody introspection, as disjointed piano bits pop up uneasily between dim proclamations ("No say in this/ No say in this/ Why must we try?").
The only problem is that Over the Sun is a remarkably pained record, and its built-in malcontent taxes listeners, shamelessly demanding our empathy, attention, and stamina, tugging on our arms, filling up our living rooms, leaving a trail of desperate, coughing voicemails. It's not that Wright's dissatisfaction isn't compelling or convincing, but that her unhappiness is impossibly unrelenting: Blood spurts from every clenched gasp and vacant guitar strike, tears tumble out of lonesome drum beats and stray piano notes. What the record lacks is a logical sense of perspective: Wright's pain is a straight line, unwavering and stoic, with no peaks, recessions, or hops. Consequently, listening becomes an exercise in endurance, a long, extended attempt to justify Wright's untempered sonic frustration. While Wright's songwriting is admirable, the tonality of Over the Sun is entirely unbearable: Check 3,000 shades of black, with absolutely no sun in sight.
