CD of The Week

Sunflower Bean - Mortal Primetime (Lucky Number)

“We never really even spent time apart,” Sunflower Bean’s drummer Olive Faber recently told the NME, looking back on the artistic difference the band felt for the first time while recording their new vulnerably honest record, Mortal Primetime.  Those differences were reflected in life-changing events: Faber was working on a new project (Stars Revenge), bass/vocalist Julia Cumming was going through a personal break-up, and guitar/vocalist Nick Kivlen moved to California. Sunflower Bean has been going strong for 12 years and were once hailed as the hardest-working band in New York City back when all three members were just 18. Now 29, they’ve been working as one unit for so long that Faber explained to the NME that their tension resulted from “when you do something for a long time and [don’t] really pay attention to how you’re actually feeling.”

So the band focused and gathered themselves together, drawing inspiration from life and each other as they self-produced Mortal Primetime. The lead glam meets power-pop single “Champagne Taste” shares its name with the band’s alias: the name they’d put on a bill when they’d play a secret show without the perception of being Sunflower Bean. In the single’s press release, Cumming said, “This song came after a period that felt like rock bottom for the band. It is about feeling beaten down but still driving forward, to keep faith, to grow and to continue to create on our own terms.” While the members of Sunflower Bean have been through personal struggles, growth and change, they don’t buy into the idea that tragedy is needed to make art. With a nearly seamless transition from track one to two, “Nothing Romantic” with its metal meets disco sound, has Cumming echoing that sentiment when she sings, “There’s nothing romantic in being alone.”

Sunflower Bean takes pride in melding together a wide array of styles to make songs that create their sound. Already mentioning glam, power-pop, disco and metal, they also add fuzzy shoegaze and grunge with the ending track “Sunshine.” “Look What You’ve Done to Me” is a theatrical showtune-worthy song while “I Knew Love” and “Take Out Your Insides” both have classic country leanings. The latter track’s chorus sounds like Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” played at 1.5x speed through a jangly R.E.M. effects pedal. “Waiting For the Rain” is one of two songs that Kivlen sings, and he boasts a face-melting guitar outro that feels just as arena rock bombastic as Slash’s solo in “November Rain.” “Shooting Star” and “There’s A Part I Can’t Get Back” both share Fleetwood Mac vibes. But “There’s a Part I Can’t Get Back” stands as the emotional centerpiece (and latest single) of the album. The song focuses on the “help” that the band received while trying to make it early on. That grooming to become a big name came with unanticipated trauma that Cumming still lives with. Talking to the NME, she said, “I’m talking about the sexual abuse that I’ve sung about on all of our records…This time, I’m saying it in the clearest way possible because I’m not as afraid of it anymore.” There is no need for metaphor or a sugar coating as she looks back at her younger self in this frustratingly sad yet confident song, delivering the analysis “There’s a part I can’t get back / You stole it from me / There’s a bag I can’t unpack / It’s always with me” ending with the gentle threat: “If I die before I wake, I pray the lord lets me get even first.”

Sunflower Bean declared, “our happiest place has always been on tour. Come celebrate your mortality with us in the flesh” in a recent Instagram post announcing their tour. Consider that your gracious invite to their performance at Johnny Brenda’s on Saturday, May 16th with Lavenda opening.
Review by Shepard Ritzen