Not many young bands these days have patience for the slow burners. With nary a catchy hook to their name, Nude Sunrise rewards the long listen in their impressive full-length LP Hunks Like Us. The Chicago-based foursome draws from genres as disparate as psych-jam, kraut-rock, New Wave, and the sweet licks mentality of soulful southern rock. It’s a motley hybrid that the album pulls off successfully in eight songs, inviting the listener to come in, have a seat, and stay a while.
"Load King" exults in archetypal American road-rage fantasy delivered in the key of Neu. Chainsaw guitars buzz over the steady propulsion of a snare drum while a manic solo unleashes into the musical space above, conjuring images of dark, flat cactus-strewn landscapes. The longest play of the album, "Skatepark USA", is almost sadistic in its unflinching repetition of a single, seasick-making trope – but patience is rewarded with a majestic crescendo reminiscent of the epic "Hellhole Ratrace" by the San Francisco band Girls (QRO live review).
Hunks Like Us balances the more abstract thrills with rootsy nods to blues-based rock. "Cuddle Puddle" and "Lean Love" – hazy synthesizer backgrounds notwithstanding – could have been Allman Brothers outtakes. Nude Sunrise show a special knack for mixing a new school digital antics with old school textures, as in "Strawberry Jerry", where a looped Grateful Dead sample blossoms into a heady arabesque of simple tones and flavored distortion.
The proliferation of digital media has made pastiche the default aesthetic of our age. Instead of pasting together genres willy-nilly though, Nude Sunrise puts them together the way they should be re-assembled. Tracks like "Fruit Snacks", lulling the listener with an extended instrumental before exploding into a pop anthem, are smart, surprising, and just plain fun. Hunks Like Us pays respects to its source material while at the same time blowing the inherited conventions out of the water with ambitious spacey, ambient compositions that ask for a little faith, and then reward it.
MP3 Stream: "Fruit Snacks"
