Sunset Valley

Icepond (Barsuk)
by Jon Sarre

Since these psychedelic purty noodlin’ muppets lived in the same town as me for a while (and I guess some of ’em still do, I think I heard singer/guitarist Herman Jolly moved to Montana), I’ve seen Sunset Valley more than a few times and Viva Las Vegas usedta drive me to distraction listenin’ to their New Speed record (and then theorize why they were so fuckin’ great, tho’ I can’t get past the “artrock” tag most days). So mebbe like the proverbial bad penny, here I got their new record, Ice Pond. It’s all swirly’n’echo laden o’er which old Herman lays down his poetry for the benefit of all the sensitive ladies in the thrift store clothes doin’ the slow shimmy up front. Despite the fact that I peg this as nonsense (and not loud’n’noisy enough to be nonsense I wanna hear), as far as nonsense goes, it’s very well put-together pop-styled twangy lo-fi well-paced well-thought-out structural nonsense like an outtake from the studio collaboration Syd Barrett’n’Gram Parsons never got around to doin’. I guess that makes it interestin’… Not like a car wreck interestin’, but interestin’ nevertheless.
(PO Box 22546 Seattle, WA 98122)