Sunflower Bean take a pop turn with ‘Headful of Sugar’
Musical evolution is a funny beast. Many have mastered it like David Bowie and more recently Arctic Monkeys. However, others seem to have been driven by a manufactured need to sound different to their last record and clobbered fresh influences into their sound like a squirrel just before winter. Sunflower Bean are an oddity that don’t seem to have done either with their new reinvention. Their latest effort Headful of Sugar is less like delving into an evolution and more like reviewing a new band entirely.
Their latest album sounds like the soundtrack to a mainstream fashion outlet undergoing a cool advertising rebrand, which is ironic considering it is apparently about the “lived in experience of late capitalism”. The synthy tones bring to mind a fire pit party where the post-night pictures are brilliant, but you can’t be sure anyone has had a good time. The production is crisp and song structures are sartorially smart but other than that the record sadly seems lost, standing with a margarita in the corner wondering what it’s all about.
By no means is it a bad record—it’s perfectly well made, the compositions are sound and there’s enough diversity to keep things moving, but it almost seems like a cobbled facsimile of a 2016 beach day playlist. Taking elements from each song that might end up on that list, it puzzles the listener more than it beguiles them.
Perhaps the point is that it is trying to do too much in every sense. Guitar solos – although well performed and constructed with a rig sound that will have a few fiends in awe – just seem to be amidst the blissful tones to appease the notion that they also have psychedelic influences in their welter. Likewise, the broad stroke of the album’s loose aforementioned theme of the “lived in experience of late capitalism” is way too vague considering that encompasses the majority of life in the western world.
There is enough on display here and in their back catalogue to suggest that they will be back stronger—they’ve clearly got a lot to offer. However, on this occasion, they’ve sonically got too much to offer and thematically not enough. The result is a record that seems like a constructed product and not a sincere work of art.
Certain tracks might pop in a changing room, but when levelled with the full thing you reach your fill just after the starter. You can check it out for yourself below.
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