For the second time in three reviews I’m parting with an album immediately after reviewing it. This is also the seventh album in the past 22 that has met a similar fate which I think shows I need to be more discerning with what I purchase. Or maybe I’m just on a rough streak.
Disc 1605 is…Headful of Sugar
Artist: Sunflower Bean
Year of Release: 2022
What’s up with the Cover? The band hangs out down by the power station. Lead singer Julia Cumming is in the foreground looking cold, likely on account of those leather shorts she’s wearing.
How I Came To Know It: I really liked the band’s previous album, 2018’s “Twentytwo in Blue” (reviewed back at Disc 1230). Ordinarily I would have given this record a listen before purchasing but I saw it in the store and decided to buy it on a whim.
How It Stacks Up: I have two Sunflower Bean albums. Of the two, “Head Full of Sugar” is easily the worst. That makes it #2, and not in the good “silver medal” kind of way.
Ratings: 2 stars
“Headful of Sugar” feels like Sunflower Bean spent their summer vacation digging through their parent’s CD collection looking for inspiration. They find plenty of it, but whatever magic sparked their imagination is mostly lost in the translation. Instead we get a record with a few too many styles, none of which feel original.
When I reviewed “Twentytwo in Blue” I also commented on the multiple eras of music the band explores. Then it was sixties and eighties, and on “Headful of Sugar” they add the late nineties/early oughts to their repertoire. The result is a busy loudness that overpowers a lot of what made the previous record great.
The worst offender is “Roll the Dice” where they embrace the loudness wars of yesteryear, with plenty of crunch, fuzz and thump but very little to hold your attention once you strip away all the bells and whistles. Also, it takes a lot of effort to strip away those bells and whistles. The whole record suffers from this saturation of production, and even when they do strip it away for the bridge it is clunky pop radio artifice; a card trick where you can see the magician pulling the aces out of his sleeve.
“Stand By Me” has a structure like early Madonna, which is a sound I have learned (after a very long time and a lot of denial) to love. The song is buoyed by Julia Cumming’s voice, which is well suited to this bubble gum whimsy. You can see her riding in a convertible, her hair pulled up under a kerchief, girlishly flirting with the camera. It almost won me over, but at least didn’t annoy like some of the tracks.
“Baby Don’t Cry” sounds like Garbage. I mean the band here, but it strays close to the lower case ‘g’. It is a song that feels like teens should be dancing to it at the Bronze, right before a vicious vampire assault. Those songs were passable while watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but they are very hit and miss away from that environment, and so too is “Headful of Sugar.”
The most maddening thing about this record is that it still has an undercurrent of what makes “Twentytwo in Blue” such a good record, but they’ve drowned it in production. It has also gone from paying playful homage to earlier eras and instead crossed over into Gestetner territory – a true copy, but in a lighter, bluer colour palate, smudged at the edges with too much ink.
I never got properly angry at this record, but I did get fidgety, and despite a long day I made a point of finding time to write this review so I could move on. I will be passing this album to someone who will enjoy it more than I did.
Best tracks: Who Put You Up to This?, Otherside
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