From what I had read and researched about this band before hitting Bowery Ballroom on Monday night (09.14.2009), I was prepared for unexpected pleasures. The official website for the band ran the motto “Sleepy Sun cannot be pre-defined or bracketed” and I for one was willing to believe this. From the surreal and vaguely self-contradictory name (the sun is associated with being awake, surely) and the fact that each band member sports the surname “Brown” on their MySpace site, including the angel-voiced female “Honey Pie Brown”, nothing about the band seemed to make much sense.
The gig at the Bowery Ballroom was a date in Sleepy Sun’s first East Coast tour, so I felt honored to be there. The band was coming fresh off the back of playing the ATP (All Tomorrow’s Parties) festival in New York, which finished on September 13th. And knowing what ATP festivals are like, i.e. slightly off the wall and off the beaten track, I knew the band had been mingling in eclectic circles. In at interview conducted just before ATP, Sleepy Sun’s lead singer, real name Bret Constantino, summed up the group’s main interests as “Pizza, horticulture, Neil Percival Young”. Readers can make up their own minds about this. For one, I am with Bret on Neil Young. Legend!
As the six piece assembled on stage, Constantino remarked that the band’s tour had “been getting very weird very quickly”. Dressed like a throw back to the 70s, with incredibly fantastic uncontrollable hair, the vocalist cut an impressive and unique stage presence, and this was amplified by his neighbor on the mic, Rachael Williams, whose voice was completely incongruous with her physical appearance. Dressed all in red, with jet black mop hair, she looked ragged to say the least and her manic stage antics, involving using her head as a extra drum stick, only served to confirm this wild impression. However, as soon as she opened her mouth, the audience became transfixed. Her crystal clear vocals perfectly complimented Constantino’s guttural wailing. You really have to see Sleepy Sun in the flesh to get the full wondrous effect.
I wasn’t familiar with the group’s debut album, Embrace, released earlier this year, but a cursory scan of comments made by a number of California based reviewers (Sleepy Sun originate from Santa Cruz, but now reside in San Francisco) revealed its content as a mix of heavy psychedelic freakadelia and dusted Northern Californian psych-folk. And when the band kicked into action, this is exactly what I got and more. Boasting an incredible stage presence and blasting out crushing, floating melodies, Sleepy Sun filled the entire ballroom with a wall of sound. Constantino flicked between the harmonica, which he played with much gusto and skill, and the tambourine, a staple of any loose-haired front man. Brian Tice on drums kept a powerful, pounding rhythm and Evan Reiss and Matt Holliman produced a wave of soaring guitars.
A Sleepy Sun gig is certainly not for the faint hearted, since pretty much anything is created musically and you leave the venue not really knowing what just happened. But if you like to have your senses bombarded and get a kick out of a thick slide of psychedelia, then this could be just your thing.
