Sunny Intervals: Swept Away
(Self Launched)
Obtain/Streaming
Out Now
Visitor reviewer, Jonathan Shipley of Assistant listens to Swept Away, the latest launch from Sunny Intervals for LTW.
Sunny Intervals is the undertaking of ex-Pocketbooks bandleader Andy Hudson, who’s new (self-released) album Swept Away is among the finest issues I’ve heard in a very long time. Since 2012 Andy has been quietly (i.e., beneath my shallow radar) releasing albums of splendid, literate indie pop all of that are richly populated with songs to treasure. They’re above all else powered by the seasons – notably spring and summer season – and preoccupied with the passing of time, the importance of remoted moments and the on a regular basis objects that give them weight. Throughout 4 albums now his tender, superbly organized songs – breathlessly populated with lengthy runs of phrases and ornate instrumental prospers – have charted inside climate with exterior cues: the primary indicators of spring, the “two for one seaside towels and low cost parasols” of summer season. Swept Away – his first report in eight years – appears like a traditional to my ears.
Hudson can’t assist however populate his songs with particulars – he has the songwriter’s equal of a photographic reminiscence, adorning his songs with vivid visible clues. On his debut, 2012’s beautiful, romantic, Rooftops, the imagery explores a spread of shared moments within the trendy metropolis – conferences on hearth escape stairs, rooftop bars, views throughout Blackfriars Pier. 2014’s Step Into Spring, in the meantime, is an album of perpetual movement, of transport as a form of theatre through which a roll name of buses, ferries, cable vehicles, carousels and rowing boats ship the songwriter exactly nowhere, “with a single oar to row towards the tide”. On 2016’s Dawn the world appears somewhat extra turbulent nonetheless: we meet spinning dancers, damaged musical devices, cases of surreal climate, and landscapes that blur into dream sequences. Every music is full of sensory particulars, from home windows rattling “like tender tambourines” to a salsa purple wedding ceremony outfit which “clashed with the flowers”. The sensation is of a world which is rushing up; a sense which accelerates on Swept Away to the purpose the place it typically feels that Andy is simply watching the world fizz previous, faintly astonished.
For a person who has written many phrases on summer-readiness, Ready For Sunshine finds him caught on the hop, too preoccupied with the state of the world to have organized his “field contemporary trainers” and began to get pleasure from himself. What does an expression of pleasure even imply, he desires to know, in 2025? Aren’t we simply knowledge to be measured? “Strongly agree”, he sings – discovering an irrepressible melody – “considerably disagree, someplace inbetween / It’s all related, statistically important to somebody / To someone someplace”. There’s a way of the narrator ready for greater than sunshine – what’s actually wanted is that means. “I have to type myself out”, Andy sings, as he’s pressured into the unwelcome function of bystander slightly than participant. “I’m on the fence, really feel detached, positively impartial / Feeling barely sick of all of it”.
How cautious and musical the preparations are on this report. Hudson’s palette is constructed from a sparsely chosen vary of textures; rhythmic guitar choosing, twinkling pianos, bursts of orchestral element and the sometimes tinny beat. I’m reminded most of Darren Hayman, Kings of Comfort and Blur, however regularly the songs spiral right into a fragile, delirious stomp which most recollects the ecstatic sweep of Motown or Northern Soul, or within the case of showstoppers The Blink of An Eye and Draw The Curtains, Paul Weller’s Model Council-era blue eyed soul balladry.
A lot of Swept Away issues melancholy moments of isolation and corresponding cases of eager for belonging. Summer time Attracts In and Misplaced and Discovered are each fretfully preoccupied with impermanence, the place each an excellent summer season and a brand new romance are haunted by the inevitability of their ending: “Trip romances and summer season encounters / doused just like the charcoals on barbecue units”. On ‘Ready for Sunshine’ “the tide is available in so quick however then it simply rolls slowly out”. The whole lot modifications, nothing is definite: “I don’t understand how the story ends / I don’t know if the arc goes to interrupt / or simply bend”.
Maybe the album’s most revealing lyric opens ‘Electromagnetic’: “I could be overthinking this, however…”, Andy discloses. I empathise with the admission. On The Blink Of An Eye, Andy’s eye for particulars accretes, recording not simply the furnishings of life (“the shutter sound in your cell phone / spare raincoats and sneakers by the door”) but in addition its absences, the “empty area on the tables and chairs”. On Misplaced & Discovered Andy observes “I can see in quick ahead, of late / at a 1.8 velocity price”. The small print of life can overwhelm. Particularly if one feels dislocated, hypersensitive to patterns, timelines, particulars, emotional nuance. Overthinking all the pieces.
One Final Day of the Holidays is wonderful, and hits me onerous, listening to the album for the tenth time in every week on the final day of my very own journey to France again in Could; a vacation on which I struggled to chill out for the primary few days as a result of I used to be worrying about work and my mother and father (one in all whom had a stroke whereas we drove dwelling). My goodness, don’t everyone knows that sense of loss that comes with the realisation that our holidays are practically over! “I simply want one final day of the vacations / one final day of the vacations / I’ll be prepared / Yet one more open air bus tour / one final form on the dancefloor”. After all, Andy doesn’t fairly escape the sense that he’s dwelling on borrowed time, however the music shimmers with the enjoyment of a well-earned break from temporal overwhelm – remodeled, “super-elevated” by the expertise of unstructured time. All of us want extra of that.
I’m in love with this report. In Synchronised, Andy will get somewhat extra reduction: he catches sight of an unspecified ‘you’ within the fragmented, flash-lit freeze-frames of the dancefloor (“I catch your eyes / Dilating within the darkness / Reflecting within the accent lights”) and revels within the second of concord: “Hypnotised / Synchronised with one another each time”.
Electromagnetic tells the entire story. “I’m simply operating round in circles / Carried on the waves / The daylight within the clearing / And the phrases leaping from the web page / The readability is fleeting then it’s gone / Softly swept away / Second guessing all the pieces / Pulling on the slightest thread”. The emotional motion-sickness, the delicate flashes of perception, the compulsion to overanalyse. Chasing that means in alerts that vanish as quickly as they arrive.
Draw The Curtains, inevitably, brings issues to an in depth. Winter has arrived. Given all of the mentions of summer season throughout Sunny Intervals’ information, I wish to ask Andy what he thinks of winter, however I get a way of it right here. The tide heads slowly again out. “And I’ll draw the curtains and silence the telephone”, he sings, “cancel the milk and the pay as you go”. A shifting, lilting piano fugue, reflective and crystalline, ebbs and flows. It’s astoundingly lovely, wistful and tender.
Thank goodness the nice climate will probably be again once more – I need Andy again on this planet, catching rays, fretting, itemising hypermarket cabinets, traversing the tramways, writing extra good songs.
I actually hope we received’t have to attend eight years for his subsequent LP.
Sunny Intervals may be discovered on Bluesky, Instagram and Bandcamp
Picture Provided by Andy Hudson / Sunny Intervals
Visitor reviewer Jonathan Shipley is a member of the band Assistant and publishes the fanzine In The April Solar which is accessible through Bandcamp
A Plea From Louder Than Battle
Louder Than Battle is run by a small however devoted impartial workforce, and we depend on the small amount of cash we generate to maintain the positioning operating easily. Any cash we do get shouldn’t be lining the pockets of oligarchs or mad-cap billionaires dictating what our journalists are allowed to assume and write, or hungry shareholders. We all know instances are powerful, and we wish to proceed bringing you information on essentially the most attention-grabbing releases, the newest gigs and anything that tickles our fancy. We aren’t pushed by revenue, simply pure enthusiasm for a scene that each one in all us is keen about.
To us, music and tradition are eveything, with out them, our very souls shrivel and die. We don’t cost artists for the publicity we give them and to many, what we do is totally important. Subscribing to one in all our paid tiers takes only a minute, and every sign-up makes a huge effect, serving to to maintain the flame of impartial music burning! Please click on the button beneath to assist.
John Robb – Editor in Chief
