The standard form-follows-function justification for dream-pop's aural clutter goes something like this: Because the music focuses on memories and emotional pasts, it makes sense that it's fuzzy, ambiguous, and rose-tinted. That's what memories are like, after all. Or so the arguments go. So sometimes the most refreshing thing about A Sunny Day in Glasgow is that they seem to remember that dreams aren't vague recitations, they're constructions. They achieve this not by writing catchy songs and then wrapping them in yarn, but by continuously unraveling and re-messing whatever is in front of them.
On their third proper album, Autumn, Again, ASDIG continue to write pop songs that basically fail to distinguish music from memory anyway, so fragmentary are their creations. A first kiss here, a Chiffons melody there, some of Cluster's keyboards chewed and then wadded under a desk. Autumn, Again follows Ashes Grammar and the Nitetime Rainbows EP as the final remnant of a burst of creativity that saw the band rotate their lineup, record, and then tour extensively. Autumn, Again was finally finished during a recent break, and it's more of the same: bandleader Ben Daniels mapping and manipulating the airy voices of Annie Fredrickson, Jen Goma, and whatever else his bandmates float his way. It is more concise (conveniently, coincidentally, half as long as Ashes Grammar) and less wily than its predecessor, often relying on comparatively sturdy and rock band-y arrangements.
They are playful in the way that, say, Belle and Sebastian are playful, caching lovelorn sentiments in junior-high language and girl-group sighs: "How does somebody say when they like you?" "Calling It Love Isn't Love (Don't Fall in Love)" is, structurally, one of the band's simplest songs ever: flushed acoustic guitars, snares on the 2's and 4's, an electric guitar solo. The very next song-- catch the title: "This Assclown Eats Ambien OR Nobody Likes You (No Art)"-- grabs lustily at over-reverberated, 4AD-style atmosphere. And still, there are occasions when ASDIG just take off: when the beat hits during "Drink Drank Drunk" or when the voices bob and weave between the interjecting synth candyland of "Fall in Love". If bands were in the habit of pressing 10 and 20-second moments to 7" vinyl, ASDIG would make a killing.
The stakes of Autumn, Again seem lower, which is disappointing because the stakes for Ashes Grammar-- an ambitious album, but an ambitious album by a minor Philadelphia dream-pop group-- were already pretty low. Autumn, Again is a self-admitted lateral step for the band, but it's hard to argue with the distribution model: after the vinyl/digital-only Nitetime Rainbows, Autumn, Again will be offered as a free download (as well as on limited vinyl). ASDIG don't want to clutter our shelves, they want merely to empty their brains. Indulging them is a pleasure.
