Review: Setting Sun – Fantasurreal

Setting Sun’s newest album, Fantasurreal, is remarkably lush, beautiful, and open. It is a natural progression from the much labored-over Children of the Wild, yet, more than simply being a sequel to that album, it takes unexpected turns. The almost sci-fi synthesizer touches become increasingly decorative, wild, and colorful. The melodies, as ever, are wonderfully memorable. They stick with you but without the cloying quality that some catchy choruses or hooks have, where after an hour of having the song in your head, you pine for release. “Handsome Bride,” with its beautiful refrain of “And you know that you’re never alone anymore” is a stand-out. It is subtle and understated through its moving verses, but its chorus, consisting only of this line with backing vocals by Laurence Roper that induce chills, is what makes it so lasting and pleasant to carry with you. If Children of the Wild’s “Overjoyed” brought you back to the feeling of childhood at its best, this album continues such feelings at times; simply stated, the album is fun. Not ironic, not solipsistic, not post-modern, just fun. Erica Quitzow’s dervishes on strings continue to add immeasurable sorcery to the mix. Sometimes arranged by Gary Levitt, the man who essentially is the band, sometimes improvising or (co-)arranging herself, her passionate and skillful raking of violins and cellos expand the open sound stage and the imaginative vividness of the album. One of the album’s highlights is an instrumental interlude toward the end, where Quitzow’s playing can be envisioned as dancing lithely with a solid drumbeat, Gary’s usually understated clear and crisp acoustic strumming, where each string resonates out into an infinity of possible ears and situations, as if humbly attaining to reach out to the consciousness of the stars, and a mounting dramatic use of mellotron, one more vivacious color on Fantasurreal’s generous palette. Also new to the sonic landscape on Setting Sun’s fourth album is a trumpet, used to epic effect on the second track, another spiritually imbued anthem, “Make You Feel.” Levitt’s insistent though not preachy refrain on this song is “No one’s going to make you feel as good as you do.” The repetition of “you” is the key to this song. If the idea is Buddhist, the cheery piano chords, the timeless rock sound, and Levitt’s humility is a welcome reprieve from self-inflated singers who have stumbled upon one spiritual truth and immediately capsize into a pitfall of ego absorption. Or maybe it is just an enthusiastic love song with incorrect grammar. You choose. “Don’t Grow Up” and “One Time Around” are also expansions of the established Setting Sun sound, with “One Time Around” accomplishing a difficult task: singing about the idea of multiple lives both within one life and the greater context of reincarnation without sounding stupid. “Don’t Grow Up” has a subtle beauty that slowly uncoils and a chorus that lifts you up. Setting Sun, with its fourth album, continues to prove two things long suspected to be highly unlikely: music can be happy or uplifting without being annoying or trite, and that artificial sounds can complement acoustic instruments in a way so natural and effective you might wonder why it took this long for someone to do it.

By Kevin Larkin Angioli

Related Posts:
Assemble Head and Sleepy Sun take on the Road in September ...

Placebo – Battle For The Sun ...

The Veils – Sun Gangs ...

Share