I’ve been watching Adam Neely videos on YouTube for years, now. He is easily one of my favorite creators. He’s fun and dumb and memey in the best ways. He doesn’t take himself too seriously even as he puts tons of time and effort into understanding music and what it means to him, what it means to others. He’s very deliberate in staying in his lane, and to correcting and addressing past instances in which he has strayed. His arguments are thoughtful and well put together. He’s willing to look for the difficult answers, and he’s willing to say when he doesn’t know the answer, when all he can do is articulate his process and explain what makes the question so difficult to answer. I wrote my piece about genre before he released this video, and while I still think the stuff I wrote is useful and gives good context to my blog and my process, if I’m wanting to communicate ideas about genre and music conceptually to people, I’m obviously just going to tell people to watch his video. It’s really good.
All that to say, I’ve been meaning to listen to Sungazer for ages. I respect the hell out of Adam Neely as a writer and musician, and any time he brings up the band or shows clips of them preforming or whatever I feel compelled to listen to them. Took me long enough, I really don’t know why I put it off so long. Especially since there’s not that much, it ended up being super quick and enjoyable.
My first impression of Perihelion was positive, but it didn’t blow me away. Not every song holds my attention all the way through, but almost every song at least had enough to be worth the listen, had enough payoff that I know I’ll learn to like the parts I’m not naturally as inclined to. I wish it had more funky crazy drum bits, more intense syncopation, more parts that had me feeling like I didn’t even know what I was listening to for a minute. Those are crunchy, those are my jam.
Thankfully, Against the Fall of Night totally has more of those. It’s what I wanted Perihelion to be, I think. It goes hard. I can only imagine I’ll grow to like it more, it’s totally my jam. It has so much richness and complexity and musicality, but it’s also fun and has accessible licks and grooves. I don’t know if I would’ve been in a place where I would’ve been able to like this so readily even just a year ago—it’s got no words, no vocals! Ahh!! So scary! But I’ve been practicing my listening and I’ve been getting better, and this totally slaps. Easy A.
A slight aside, the two shorter EPs were rife with songs and moments that felt so Louis Cole to me, which of course is dope. Love Louis Cole.
Sungazer complete, now listening to Noah Kahan
tunafruitsandwitch 