@ The Bishop
Wednesday November 18
9 p.m.
$7
18+
A Sunny Day in Glasgow are at the point in their career where they’ll swing by Bloomington, but the band’s exponentially-growing success indicates that next time, the show won’t be so cheap and in such an intimate location. Remember what Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste said this summer about previously playing at a church to a handful of audience members in Bloomington? You can laud all about seeing them before they open up for the Jesus and Mary Chain/My Bloody Valentine/Radiohead, or whatever “We’re not in Kansas anymore” moment will come about for these guys.
ASDIG is fronted by identical twin sisters Lauren and Robin Daniels along with their brother Ben. ( Sidenote: I’m glad they don’t sound very eerie, because the whole twins thing might give me some “The Shining” type chills). The band’s beginnings were in the 2000s, but it wasn’t until the 2006 release of their EP, The Sunniest Day Ever that folks really started talking. Once the EP floated through the top of the blogosphere, they signed to Notenuf Records and released their first LP, Scribble Mural Cosmic Journal later that year.
In September, Ashes Grammar gave the group a strong foothold by not disappointing their critics(they hate to praise potential then find it’s all wasted). Most importantly, they hate to be wrong! Pitchfork continued to grant them the seal of approval, both in terms of the album and stage performance. Under The Radar magazine, Coke Machine Glow and BBC also applauded their sophomore effort.
Indeed, there is a shoegaz’d ethereal quality to their sound, but it doesn’t come off as an artificial attempt to emulate their musical heros. It’s easily accessible poppy, and trippy: the stuff that pasty white liberal arts college girls will listen to while smoking pot with pasty white liberal arts college boys. The swirling release can send you on a pulsating trance, a meditative state or a flashback to 80s lo-fi.
The low point of the album, as one would predict from any 22-tracked LP(ranging from a few seconds to nearly 7 minutes), is its tendency to drag. Pop Matters writes “While there are many indisputable highlights to be found on Ashes Grammar, it can be a chore to find them.” But All Music Guide suggests that anyone who powers through the album will be richly rewarded in the end. It might not jump at you on the first listen. My biggest problem is the passivity of the vocals, as if the Daniels sisters know they can turn things up a notch, but they’d just rather not.
Regardless of some defects on Ashes Grammar, I feel pretty confident in saying the best has yet to come for A Sunny Day in Glasgow, and that they’ll be yet another band that strolls through Bloomington before blowing up beyond belief.
Check out some mp3 downloads via Stereogum.
-$tefania
