More successfully than most, Sunflower Bean has always resisted being effectively pigeonholed. From their earliest days, phrases attempting to define their sound in just one or two words (“neo-psychedelic rock,” “’70s-meets-90s,” “new millennium retro glam”) quickly piled up, one after the other, as they all inevitably fell short in capturing the band’s deceptively simple melange of styles and sounds. And with their first LP after more than a decade of making music together, the group is no closer to easy categorization—but it might have happened upon making the best album of the trio’s career.
Because after 10+ years of flirting with nearly every classic-rock trope under the sun, Sunflower Bean has returned with Mortal Primetime, a record which casts aside the traditional rock-band impetus to choose an era, genre, and style of rock and roll’s past to emulate—and instead embraces all of them. Whereas previous releases like Twentytwo in Blue and Headful of Sugar maintained more aural cohesion (’70s pop-rock and glam-ified NYC dive-bar grooves, respectively), the new album’s connective tissue is more conceptual and emotional than musical. After the past few years saw band members moving to different coasts, drifting apart, and wondering if it was time to call it a night, Mortal Primetime positively seethes with the desire to make this one count—to craft a deeply confessional record that uses scuzzy riffs, over-the-top arrangements, and slick melodies (sometimes a hair’s breadth away from corny) in order to smuggle in the most earnest, guileless feelings and emotions imaginable.
Sure, it still sounds like the same band—pivoting smoothly from soft-rock ballads to dirty ’80s power chords to Fleetwood Mac to T. Rex to Heart to the Who to you-name-it-it’s-probably-in-here—but with a newfound command of all those musical grace notes. Before, it always sounded like the group was delightedly excavating one old strain of retro sound after another and breathing new life into them; now, it feels like they’ve finished digging through every last crate of rock vinyl from the past 50 years, picked their faves, and pulled them together for a masterclass in rock fusion.
This is a record proudly playing to the cheap seats, indulging in the most shopworn of rock cliches in a manner that pushes them through the looking glass to make them fresh again. Put plainly, this album has fun, and isn’t embarrassed to lean into it. (This aesthetic was announced last year with the Shake EP, a collection of down-and-dirty rockers accompanied by videos in which the band leaned into full hair-blowing-in-the-wind, cock-rock bravado.) When the opening song, “Champagne Taste,” finds singer-bassist Julia Cumming informing the listener that “I got that champagne taste / I know you wanna take a sip,” over a churning riff that Bob Seger might have deemed a bit much, you know you’re in the hands of musicians eager to seize rock’s most time-tested theme—get it while you’re young—and make it their own.
And that proud refusal to avoid contemporary trends—to ignore any indie less-is-more, wannabe-Strokes coolness, in favor of riffs and vocals so out of step with the times, they walk right up to cheesy without falling over into it—is what makes Mortal Primetime so great. Gerard Way may have been a theater kid, but Sunflower Bean are rock gone full Broadway—not sonically, but soulfully. It’s music so wonderfully unencumbered by a need to seem contemporary, it feels like a long-forgotten jukebox you and your dorky uncle could both jam out to and never once feel like it doesn’t speak to both of you directly. It’s hard to overstate how rare a quality that is in rock music.
Take “Waiting For The Rain,” a ballad that finds guitarist Nick Kivlen delivering a you-can’t-go-home-again ode to bygone days: Not only does it incorporate bombastic cello and inspirational piano trills, but the larger-than-life choruses eventually segue into the most cathartic guitar solo since “Black Hole Sun.” Or “There’s A Part I Can’t Get Back,” where Cumming sings affectingly about dealing with a brutal loss of innocence, and the music goes full Fleetwood—not the ’70s version, mind you, but the ’80s. And “Shooting Star” gives the whole of Laurel Canyon a run for its money in the psychedelic folk-rock department, before segueing smoothly into album closer “Sunshine,” with a thick layer of slowcore distortion Slowdive would envy. Somehow, it works. It shouldn’t, but it does.
And that’s Mortal Primetime at its essence: A collection of songs that take everything Sunflower Bean has always excelled at, but better, louder, clearer…..a “more is more” attitude unfiltered by restraint or modesty. The louds are louder, the quiets quieter, no power chord or lilting lullaby so fey it can’t be goosed just a little bit more. Glam pivots to folk, hair-metal melds seamlessly with soft rock, yet it never once trips over itself with an out-of-place reference or hoary retread. These are songs that, individually, sound as though they could’ve come from any decade or scene of the past half-century, but future-proofed through sheer chutzpah. Records almost never feel like they simply sprung, fully formed, from a band’s collective unconscious, yet here lies Mortal Primetime: It’s not perfect, but damned if it isn’t timeless.
Read: “How Sunflower Bean Mastered the Art of Playing It Through”
Alex McLevy is a critic based in Chicago. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including The A.V. Club, The Nation, Punk Planet, and more.
