Artist: Sunshine Trip
Label: Self-released
Release: 2011
Length: 45:00
Rating: 3.5/5
Sunshine Trip are a relatively young band from the Gorizia region, blowing along in the MTV-style current of the new-era flood of cliché-sounding post-grunge / indie pop rock bands. Their debut studio album “Sunshine Makes Me High” is a manifesto that took its sweet time to come together. The guys have been at it since 2003, so the songs had plenty of time to grow in their arrangements.
With eleven original tracks, Sunshine Trip prove they’re a tight unit with a quality dose of instrumentation, plus a vocalist who confidently owns the central role in the band’s musical sermon. All in all, “Sunshine Makes Me High” is an album that holds up in terms of quality and defiantly withstands every attack from the “doubting Thomases” who say it’s just a cheap clone of young guys playing with expensive toys bought by their wealthy 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, disproves all that, and from there on the album tackles the live, garage-style sound more openly. In terms of dynamic development the album jumps up a level, and the band’s musical know-how comes through even more clearly, backed by an exceptionally high-quality studio sound. They were careful, almost delicately so, 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: a thick, warmly toned, active melodic bass line against the laying down of occasionally furious guitar riffs, which often save the day when it comes to filling out the picture, very skillfully, through the use of the organic clean tone of the strings. Yes. The whole thing gains a feeling of looseness and carefreeness, and in its occasionally furious, brazen directness of punk dilettantism it sounds like it soaked up inspiration from past works of the likes of Bad Religion (the track Closed).
It’s worth stressing that Sunshine Trip have a great feel for combining instantly graspable melodicism, of the kind that the arrogance and direct attitude of new-era alternative rock figures can bear, so that it doesn’t come off sugary and unreal. There are moments that feel almost cloyingly poppy in their integration of trivially overchewed melodic forms, like the tracks Lolita, with its enviable combination of string arrangements and percussion at the start, and its (distant) album clone Hermit. Meanwhile, when it comes to winning over a wider circle of listeners, the dark Shadow Man works much more convincingly and gets off better. To Follow Or Not is really a continuation of the arranging style of Hermit and Lolita, but without a trace of pop pretentiousness. That danger is dispelled especially by the excellent instrumental middle section of the song, with added “Dylanesque” harmonica, which is the integral connective tissue of the whole track. The vocals in this track make no secret of their buddying up with the legacy of the vocals of more prominent grunge rock bands.
The emphasis on English is astonishing for a Slovenian band like Sunshine Trip! In a good way. Exceptionally good. That’s why it makes sense to compare “Sunshine Makes Me High” with commercially successful bands from the world-scale music industry. The directive is English, and polishing the musical doctrine in the future with English reinforced like this could bring major plus points in breaking through to the international scene. And that’s not all. The vocals carry a tastefully dosed measure of melody, melancholy, disillusionment, but also arrogance and a fiery rebellious attitude. In the moods it creates in the verses, the singer sounds convincing, and that’s a big part of why Sunshine Trip come across as authorial, tangible, and real in their sermon.
The track 5th Floor is an interesting mix of post-Brit pop in the vein of Oasis (listen to the vocal production with the added echo effect) and post-grunge cosmetics inherited from the likes of Stone Temple Pilots, with a whiff of Queens Of The Stone Age stoner prosthetics breathed into the outro.
“Sunshine Makes Me High” is a hugely successful debut, a fundamental step for a young band breathing the artistic air of the new trendy era. The album lacks sharpness and the pointed teeth of distorted edge and punk dissonance, though the question is whether Sunshine Trip even want that. At the same time, they push toward listenable pop forms with melodically trivial lead phrases and the softness of organic collages. Yes. Modern alt rock that barks but doesn’t bite, merging the leanings of post-grunge, post-Brit pop, and punk. It carries the seeds for development in several directions, but Sunshine Trip will probably stick to the basic course their debut charted. The album’s integral track is Holy Taxi! It combines the aforementioned genre influences in a hugely successful way and gets Sunshine Trip’s point across in one go.
Sunshine Trip have a sharp, talented vocalist with the power to deliver the verses convincingly. It’s also important for the band that their expression has a measure of melodicity that offers cues for combining with orchestral arrangements, which points to musical-expressive upgrades down the road. So it’ll be interesting to see where the band heads next. Compared with quality releases in this kind of trendy alt rock scene in Slovenia, this one definitely stands out in quality and sets a bright example for similar young Slovenian bands about where to head. In alternative rock, keeping an authentic live sound is elementary and essential, and “Shine Makes Me High” pulls that off, utterly convincingly, from start to finish.
Lineup
Marko Silič – vocals, harmonica
Dejan Školaris – guitar, backing vocals
Boris Leskovar – guitar
Tilen Grandovec – bass guitar
Alan Laharnar – drums, percussion
Production
Borut Čelik & Sunshine Trip
Tracklist
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
