Self-released
Year of release: 2011
Production: Borut Čelik & Sunshine Trip
Album length: 45.00 min
Genre: Alternative Rock
Sunshine Trip are a relatively young band from the Gorica area, riding the MTV-track wave of the new-age flood of cliché-sounding post-grunge / indie pop rock acts. Their studio debut “Sunshine Makes Me High” is a manifesto that took a good while to come together. The guys have been at it together since 2003, so the songs grew up in their arrangements over a longer stretch of time.
With a set of eleven original songs, Sunshine Trip prove they’re a tight unit with a quality dose of instrumental chops, plus a vocalist who confidently handles the central role in the band’s musical sermon. All told, “Sunshine Makes Me High” is an album that holds up quality-wise and defiantly shrugs off every attack from the “doubting Thomases” who claim it’s just a cheap clone, a bunch of young guys playing with expensive toys bought by their well-off parents.
Opener Way Out smells suspiciously pop-punk, as if the guys were trying to chase MTV popularity right out of the gate. The first quip that crawled into my association cortex was a faint whiff of the pathos of some modern-day mopey boys with pleading, cocker-spaniel eyes, à la Ceasar’s Rome. Luckily, the second track, Vampires, debunks the whole thing, and from there on Sunshine Trip also take on the raw, garage-y live sound more openly. Dynamically, the album jumps up a level, and the band’s musical know-how comes through even more clearly, helped by an exceptionally high-quality studio sound treatment. They were really careful to carry the live playing in the studio over to the recording as authentically as possible. And they pulled it off. The contrast is enviable between the thick, warm-toned, active melodic bass line and the layering of occasionally furious guitar riffs, which often rescue the situation of filling out the picture very deftly with the organic clean sound of the strings too. Yeah. The thing also gains a feeling of looseness and carefreeness, and in its occasionally furious, bold directness of punk dilettantism it sounds as if it had soaked up inspiration from the past work of the likes of Bad Religion (the track Closed).
It’s worth stressing that Sunshine Trip have an excellent feel for combining instantly winning melodies, the kind that the arrogance and direct attitude of new-age alternative rock figures can still bear, so that it doesn’t come out sugary and unreal. There are moments that sound almost cloyingly poppy in their integration of trivially chewed-over melodic forms, like the songs Lolita, with its enviable combination of string arrangements and percussion at the start, and its (distant) album clone Hermit, while in terms of winning over a wider circle of listeners the gloomy Shadow Man sounds far more convincing and gets away with it better. To Follow Or Not is really a continuation of the arranging style of Hermit and Lolita, but it lacks that tinge of poppy pretension, and the excellent instrumental middle section, with added “Dylanesque” harmonica, which is the integral connective tissue of the whole song, especially dispels that danger. The vocals on this track make no secret of their buddying up with the legacy of the vocalists of more prominent grunge rock bands.
The English pronunciation of Sunshine Trip, for a Slovenian band of their stamp, is astonishing! In a good way. Extremely good. That’s why it makes sense to compare “Sunshine Makes Me High” with commercially successful acts of the global music industry. The directive is thus English, and honing the musical doctrine with English backed up like this could bring major bonus points in breaking through on the international scene. That’s not all, of course. The vocalist carries a tasteful dose of melody, melancholy, disillusionment, but also arrogance and a hot-headed rebellious stance. In the feelings with which he creates the moods in the verses he sounds convincing, and that’s what makes Sunshine Trip come across as authentically tangible and real in their sermon.
The track 5th Floor is an interesting mix of the post-Britpop of the likes of Oasis (listen to the vocal production with the added echo effect) and the post-grunge cosmetics inherited from the likes of Stone Temple Pilots, with a whiff of the stoner prosthetics of Queens Of The Stone Age breathed into the outro.
“Sunshine Makes Me High” is a hugely successful debut, a foundational step by a young band breathing the artistic air of the new trendy era. The album lacks edge and sharpened teeth of distorted sharpness and punk dissonance, though it’s a question whether Sunshine Trip even want that. At the same time, they push the melodically trivial lead phrases and the softness of organic collages toward listenable pop forms. Yeah. Modern alt rock that barks but doesn’t bite, merging post-grunge, post-Britpop and punk. It carries the seeds to develop in several directions, but Sunshine Trip will probably stick to the basic course the debut laid out. The key track of the album is Holy Taxi! It merges the genre influences described above in a hugely successful way and, in a single piece, instantly lays out Sunshine Trip’s point.
Sunshine Trip have a perceptive and talented vocalist with the power of convincing interpretation of the verses. It’s also important for the band that their expression has a measure of melodicism that offers cues for combining with orchestral arrangements, which gives pointers for a musically expressive upgrade down the road. So it’ll be interesting to watch where the band heads next. Compared with quality releases in this trendy alt rock branch in Slovenia, this is certainly a record that stands out qualitatively and offers a shining example to similar young-generation Slovenian bands of where to head. In alternative rock, keeping an authentic live sound is elementary and essential, and “Shine Makes Me High” manages that all the way through, and very convincingly.
review by: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 8.0 / 10
Track list:
1. Way Out
2. Vampires
3. Jane’s Song
4. Iron Gates
5. Holy Taxy
6. Shadow Man
7. Closed
8. Lolita
9. Hermit
10. 5th Floor
11. To Follow Or Not
Line-up:
Marko Silič – vocals, harmonica
Dejan Školaris – guitar, backing vocals
Boris Leskovar – guitar
Tilen Grandovec – bass guitar
Alan Laharnar – drums, percussion
