“Death and transformation are the coolest shit to write about. When you look at life from a mystical point of view, we’re all going through changes all the time.”
So said Sonny Smith when we interviewed him last year ahead of his Sonny & the Sunsets LP Talent Night at the Ashram. Smith returns with Moods Baby Moods, the latest record in the Sunsets’ canon. For over a decade now, Smith has been crafting his own sort of universe, influenced by neighbors orbiting it: Heidi Alexander’s Earth Girl Helen Brown, his collaborations with The Sandwitches, and his 100 Records project. It’s an exaggerated reflection of our existence -- a kind of deadpan cynical vision of a not too distant future.
Sonically, he has explored and expanded upon his own brew of garage-inflected art-rock, adding forms of country, new wave and spaced-out proto-punk. Take Longtime Companion, an earnest record of forlorn country and Smith’s most genre-specific offering.
On Mood Baby Moods, those otherworldly sounds and influences — the musicians; Smith’s recurring cast of characters, strange freaks, rejects and aliens among them; the mysterious void explored -- brilliantly coalesce into what might be Smith’s defining record and inarguably his funkiest.
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