Self-Awareness Through Macrame by Sonny & The Sunsets
Release date: August 25, 2023Label: In Your Head Records
Sonny Smith, the man behind Sonny & The Sunsets seems to have that dark side of a sunset always in his mind, often adding solid touches of irony along the way.
That is probably one of the reasons he named the band’s latest offering Self-Awareness Through Macrame, a title he probably accidentally picked up from one of those old-fashioned home magazines, or as he says, from his mother back in the early seventies when she wanted to teach a course with such a name.
At the same time, some might call the music of Sonny & The Sunsets a bit old-fashioned, as on the first listen it sounds like that late sixties/early seventies West Coast psych-pop that was slowly turning into something else.
Yet, while the band’s sound here is rooted in such music Smith and his cohorts actually bring it up to modern times, as they combine sounds from wherever they could, just as long as the melody is – and this term fits here quite well – groovy.
Still, there is that brooding, sometimes ironic line in his lyrics that gives these seemingly happy-go-lucky songs a completely another substance and context.
Not many artists can put such two opposites together in such a seamless manner, but Sonny Smith does exactly that here, gathering some serious self-awareness with their musical macrame.
