Husband and wife duo Aislinn & Ryan van Kriedt may reside in Philadelphia, but they look to their northern California roots for their debut release, as Sunsplit, Sing For Sunday. Recorded in Oakland and Scotland, the van Kriedts draw from both ‘lands’: psychedelica from the Bay Area, and rock rhythm from the United Kingdom’s harder-hitting north. While this delivers nice, fuzzy vocals and strong guitar chords, the two never quite coalesce into something more. The album unfortunately lives up to the (misused) Gertrude Stein quote about her native Oaktown, “There’s no there, there.”
Sunsplit largely keeps their psychedelics to their echoed and reverbed duet-ish vocals, but does go a few different directions with their guitars, such as the strums on opener, “Something For Nothing”, the more arena rock on the following “Running After You”, and the more expansive and epic sound on the then-subsequent “We Fall Away”. But all three never quite go anywhere, and take far too long to not get there. Extended length is an issue throughout the first half of Sing For Sunday, including the late Beatles-esque title track (which doesn’t quite live up to the comparison), and the early psychedelic Beatles-ish “She Said” (which does, feeling akin to neo-Beatles like The Apples in Stereo or The Broken West).
While the last four numbers do not go on too long, in most other respects, they are worse. The slow “Feel In Love” is touching-if-not-amazing, but its laid-back follower, “The Need”, lacks any sort of hook among its smooth waves, and feels almost presumptuous (like bad Ambulance Ltd.). Sing For Sunday reaches its nadir with the plodding and grating “All I Want”, an empty song, despite its rock aspirations. Sunsplit’s most really ‘psychedelic’ number is the record’s finisher, the nice-in-an-atmospheric-kind-of-way “The Warmth In Me”, though it is still mostly the vocals that are trip-y, with relatively normal guitar and backbeat.
Live, Philly’s Aislinn & Ryan van Kriedt are backed up by men from established bands like The Asteroid #4 (one of the many Brian Jonestown Massacre spin-off bands) and Lilys, but the married pair could have really used that help in the lands of oaks and Scots, when they were recording. As it is, Sing For Sunday is a nice opener, but is better suited for background music than performed live. But now that Sunsplit has settled down in The City of Brotherly Love (though is it really a good idea have the name of a husband & wife band contain the word ‘split’?), there will hopefully be more Sundays for them to grow and sing.
