Sonny & The Sunsets – “Moods”
Idiosyncratic San Francisco psych rockers Sonny And The Sunsets have always been delightfully quirky, with unorthodox sounds jutting into infectious grooves, but they’ve dialed up their weirdness even more for their latest album Moods Baby Moods. They signaled a trip further down their eccentric path merely with the title of the lead single “Well But Strangely Hung Man” and nailed it with a wonderfully odd aesthetic to match.
Today, the band follows that up with the title track of sorts, “Moods,” and it’s another joyously bizarre romp. A funky chicken grease chord propels the track, with a groovy baseline to accentuate and an array of unconventional sounds seeping in at seemingly random moments. A digital blip line cascades into contorted, high-pitched synths, and an off-kilter rhythmic breakdown adds the slightest bit of swing to throw things off a little more. The breezy, playful delivery of lines like “I stopped to rest beneath the shadow of a tree/ Why does heaven keep looking at me?/ I’m ready for my new mood to begin/ But there’s an error message in my head,” are sure to, well, lift your mood. Listen.
Moods Baby Moods is out 5/27 on Polyvinyl.