The third L.P. release, Haunt Yourself, from Boise indie band Sun Blood Stories is a mesmerizing recording of palatable experimentations; soaring shoegaze parts; psych-rock melodies and creative infusions of blues and funk.
SBS’s high desert rock style is a mix of harmonic sonics “distilled into delicate, but always haunting, songs. Sun Blood Stories is dreamy, aware, personal, open, fuzzed-out, and loud as fuck,” says founding member Ben Kirby.
In fact, the Idaho trio started as a Kirby solo project a few years ago. He has since recruited guitarist and bass synth musician Amber Pollard and drummer/keyboardist Jon Fust.
Kirby says the new album “maintains Sun Blood’s core sound and content while simultaneously sounding like nothing they’ve ever created before.”
The band is serious about this release. They’ve pressed vinyl and CDs and also have cassette tapes and digital downloads.
Sun Blood has recently released a number of singles from the album, starting with the riveting, dark track, “Up Comes The Tunnel.”
The song brews with slowed-down ringing and distorted guitar riffs, haunting vocals, and heavy-hitting percussions.
According to Kirby, the single was the first song he wrote for the album. It came to him, he says, as he was stuck in a daydream with “a psychopomp escorting” him through a “dark tunnel with no light on the other side.”
“It’s about the voice inside your head that tries to convince you that the car in your rearview mirror is actually following you,” he says.
“It’s that feeling of impending doom.”
The listener definitely picks up that vibe listening to the track. It was also a good pick from an album with a handful of solid songs to pick from.
The mood changes on “Everybody Loves You.” The track’s sweet vocals create a Beach House cloudy day vibe that is intoxicating and sad. The refrain “everybody loves you when you’re dead” is ghoulishly disturbing.
The quieter, more introspective, mood created by the song is driven mostly by a lightly-played looping electric guitar, accented by sound effects, including chimes and seagulls.
The song has a beautifully haunting lullaby. Interestingly, it was initially a 20-minute track with more than six pages of lyrics.
The track’s theme is an ode to two friends that the band members lost in tragic events – one friend to military combat and the other to suicide.
That’s heavy stuff for anyone. The song is a fitting tribute and hopefully therapeutic for the band members and their friends’ loved ones.
The fourth track, “See You On The Other Side,” breaks open a floodgate of sonic noise with ringing and buzzing shoegaze-laden guitars; heavy bass lines; sporadic drumming; twinkling synths creating a space rock feel of drifting in outer space.
The song is powerful enough to trigger warm and happy feelings in the mind and body. That’s a powerful thing.
The following song, “Like,” is more down-to-earth but without quite having feet on the ground. Sporting bubbling bass lines and swirling guitars, the vocals are dark and creepy. Goal to creep out has been reached.
On the dark rock-opera-like track, “All the Words in Meaning,” things turn dark and disturbing.
The song is a musical journey that takes the band and the listener through slide guitarist Pollard’s troubled childhood, navigating through the trauma of growing up in an abusive household.
Like many children from abusive homes, she found a way to escape into music. She says the song is her 10-year-old self expressing her “fear, anger, and yearning to have a different life.”
Clocking in over six minutes, the slow-burning, lazy shoegaze-driven, “No One Can Hear You Dream,” is yet another standout track on the album.
The song is marked by a stomping percussion; a backward tracking guitar part with another guitar ringing in the forefront; chilling vocals and choruses.
Then the orange glow of an Arizona sunset comes alive via the sci-fi-like experimental instrumental, “Smoke.”
The song is very much indicative of the high desert feel; almost spiritual with an uplifting swirl of synths and background notes from acoustic and electric guitars. (Perhaps there was some mescaline involved?)
This song could have been twice as long and all the better for it because the listener – at least in our case – connects with the vibe here and sinks into the song’s warm sonic blanket.
The following track, “Seven Swords,” cuts through the atmosphere with a morbid, banging bassline, moments of dreary chaos and glimpses of anger, perhaps even rage.
This dark vibe continues with the next song, “Approaching Shadow.” It sounds like the two songs were meant to merge and then break apart.
Pollard’s haunting vocals turn more aggressive, repeating “she’s seen God” on the layer of buzzing guitars and wavy bass lines.
The album closes with the mysterious and spacious track, “Shimmer Distant.” It sounds very much like a dream-pop song that got spooked by a ghost. There’s even a cult-like chanting going on. Have witches cooked up a fine brew here?
But wait. Just when it seems that the song was finished it re-emerges again with Pollard’s vocals drifting away into a black hole of distortion and ringing guitars.
It’s apparent here that the band really wanted to end the album with a display of experimental indie rock – spooky voices filtered with haunting effects, sound effects, pieces of other recordings and so on.
The decision to end on this note is interesting, to say the least. At the same time, it is fitting, in some respects, to end the album on a slightly different note than much of the rest of the album.
In that case, the whole ‘haunting effect’ that the band was going for has been aptly achieved.
Kudos do not come easy. These three musicians are a tight unit and it’s apparent that they worked diligently and intently on this perhaps their best album so far.
And that’s saying a lot.
We first came across Sun Blood Stories back in 2015 and published a post highlighting their awesome debut album, Twilight Midnight Morning.
The follow up album, 2017’s It Runs Around the Room With Us is also a solid release.
According to Kirby: “Haunt Yourself falls right in line with our previous albums by picking up exactly where our previous album left off. It’s a search and encouragement for and of hope.”
But then he flips it, stating: “Hope that is quickly admonished, reminding the listener that in the end we all die.”
Geez, lighten up dude. If you dig the tracks presented in this post, we encourage you to listen to the entire album from start to finish.
Sun Blood Stories has opened for bands like Low, Acid Mothers Temple, Wooden Indian Burial Ground, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, and Like A Villian, among many others.
