Sleepy Sun Fever (ATP)
2/5
By: Stephen Maughan
“Wow, this takes me back, man. You know, when music was real and pure, the party never ended and if you weren't a dope smoking hippie, you were a square, maaan. “. Playing Sleepy Sun to your eccentric music-obsessed uncle might well provoke the above response. For Sleepy Sun, despite only being in their early 20's, live in a world where Jim Morrison reigns, and Ken Kessey's Merry Pranksters' bus with beat legend Neal Cassidy driving is still puffing along the streets of America offering kids acid and a chance to blow their minds.
Sleepy Sun pick up where their first album Embrace left off, with uplifting stoner rock trance numbers called things like 'Acid Love' and 'Desert God'. We also have long Jimi Hendrix-esque guitar solos and hypnotic bongo drums. At times listening to it brings me back to a college dorm in America where a certain boy with dazed eyes promised to get me “higher than you've ever been”... before I knew it I was rocking with him to Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin with incense burning, and a poster of Jim Morrison freaking me out on the wall. Following that experience, I've never touched an illegal substance and things have moved on.
At least I thought things had moved on. I can appreciate the view that what with music of the past 30 years being so dull, why not look back to the greats of the past for inspiration - better to look to Hendrix’s Are You Experienced? than Jason Donovan's Ten Good Reasons right? And Fever does offer a few really lovely – yes, quite lovely – songs here, particularly the acoustic 'Rigamaroo' with its laid back country feel and clever turn of phrase – “as long as you are praised you will stay...lost amongst fools in disguise”. At other times, such as on the rolling and uplifting 'Freedom Line', it becomes clear that Sleepy Sun are a band capable of rising far above the psychedelic tag – but they might not want to.
Still, far too often they play it safe and the hazy guitars go into a gear that makes me imagine the characters in Dazed And Confused getting high. Still, it takes a lot of courage to release wild, 10 minute epic songs these days, and what saves the whole album from disaster is the inescapable truth that Sleepy Sun know how to play their guitars and have a good time doing so. Fever will go down well with fans of 1960s psychedelic rock, for here is a band who have conclusively nailed the sound and style of that era. I can imagine elder editors of certain respectable music magazines totally freaking out over this one. What was that, they already have? Exactly.
Artists in this article: Sleepy Sun
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