Does Sun and Sail Club ring a bell? No? Fair enough. For many, it’s an obscure side project that we don’t quite fully understand. For others it’s the opportunity to talk about its line up, a clear 100% stoner supergroup. But for some weirdos, including myself, Sun and Sail Club has achieved cult status since its first album. And this year, our sailors of the waves of the Californian desert are back with “Shipwrecked” and it’s the opportunity to talk about this strange and elegant monstrosity that is S&SC and give our opinion on this new release.
Let me tell you a wonderful fairytale. Once upon a time, there was a guitarist who found himself playing in a legendary band but sometimes would like to be able to use the completely over the top riffs that he writes in his free time, far from the stoner of Fu Manchu. He spoke about his desire to his drummer and fellow Fu Manchu friend Scott Reeder and the two began working on compositions via emails. And then they just asked the other Scott Reeder to play bass. After all, it’s the opportunity to give life to the oldest joke in the Stoner world. “Scott Reeder and Scott Reeder walk into a bar and one is barefoot”.
Thus, in 2013 the most UFO of UFOs of the Stoner rock landscape landed. “Mannequin” by Sun and Sail Club. Imagine gypsy jazz guitar interludes and incongruous riffs with a production putting the rhythm guitar forward like never before and to top it all off… a vocoder as singer. And here you are confronted with a mix of Kraftwerk, NoMeansNo and Slayer. This album made no sense, it was an anomaly, an enigma. Yet, a little out of my love for exoticism, a lot out of my attraction to these incisive and surprising riffs, I fell head over heels for this album. I frankly think that few human beings have listened to this avant-garde record as much as I did. It remains full of obvious defaults but has such a specific charm that it strikes me with every listen.
Against all odds and while the band had gone on hiatus, a reformation was announced with the three musicians and Tony, singer of Adolescents on the microphone. Sadly, “The Great White Dope” disappointed me a little. While it was an excellent hardcore punk album, I didn’t really find in it the madness (and even well beyond the vocoder) of the first opus. It was simply a whole different band.
In 2024, and while Bob Balch is already active in half of the bands in the universe, I never imagined that a new Sun & Sail Club album would come out with this same line-up. As soon as I was able to lay my ears on the first single, and then the entire album, I finally felt like things had come full circle. A little gypsy jazz guitar intro for “Just Friends” makes the much-desired link with the first album. An atmosphere that we will find to close the album with “Days of Wine and Roses”. However, this is once again a fast record, hardcore punk at heart.
Thus “Halcyon” is one of the speed punk blasts with a completely crazy and liberating solo, a vibe you will find a few times on the album, such as on “Bird Strike”. “Torture Garden” or “The Color of War” offer a more mid-tempo version of this hardcore punk homage, reminding us Black Flag in the Rollins era. “Tumble” offers an almost prog riff (and the return of a synth as a tribute to the band’s roots), some dissonances which reconnect with the original project and it is, unsurprisingly, one of my favorite tracks of the album with again a absolute treat of a guitar solo, slightly under-mixed and drowned in reverb for even more flavor. A feeling of total satisfaction fills me with joy when listening to the ultra nervous and expeditive “Vector” and “District 19”.
Let’s also talk about “Drag The River”, the sludgy Melvinesque song, reminiscent of “Like a Bomb” or “Simple Exploding Man” by Mondo Generator, right down to the vocal lines. A heaviness that one would not have suspected from Sun and Sail Club but which works perfectly. Do you think you’ve seen it all yet? What if I told you that the band even offers a surf rock intro, straight from a Tarantino OST, on “Taste Like Blood”. Until the very end, the album is a feast of dissonance, devastating riffs, unsane guitar leads and a touch of jazz. A delight, I tell you.
A perfect synthesis of the first two albums, “Shipwrecked” will probably go unnoticed by many but it is already, for me, one of the most beautiful surprises of the year. And if, in my heart, it will never dethrone “Mannequin”, because of this unreasonable love at first sight I have for it, it is still clear that this album has managed to avoid all the pitfalls and offers us a colossal slap in the face. An ode to uninhibited, noisy and crazy punk, a total piece of work of a band which finally appears as such and no longer as a simple sound experience without head or tail.
We will probably have to wait years again until we hearing about Sun and Sail Club again but even if this were to be their last offering, it would bring this crazy story to a perfect close. And if they come back to business, rest assured that I’ll be there, on the lookout, ready to jump on their next release!
Last modified: 5 December 2024
