Sonny & the Sunsets

The Sunsets coalesced in 2007 around prolific Bay Area songwriter, author, filmmaker, and visual artist Sonny Smith. Using a spinning lineup composed of SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA regulars, including multi-instrumentalist Kelley Stoltz, Tahlia Harbour (the Dry out Spells), John Dwyer (Thee Oh Views), Tim Cohen, and Shayde Sartin (Skygreen Leopards), the Sunsets provided Smith a properly sloppy, immaculately up to date backdrop for his wry appreciate music and touching occasions of all-too-real weirdness. Carrying out a debut EP, Hypnotist, the music group released its first long-player, Tomorrow Is normally Alright, this year 2010. That calendar year, the Sunsets also participated in Smith’s 100 Information show in SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, where almost 100 artists made fictional spencer and brands for some fictional 7″s made by Smith. Smith after that recorded music to complement their covers, showing his recordings by means of an operating jukebox, including one acknowledged towards the Sunsets. By enough time from the 2011 launch of Strike After Strike, the music group had solidified right into a primary of Smith on vocals and acoustic guitar, Stoltz on drums, Harbour on vocals and acoustic guitar, and Ryan Browne on bass. Smith came back a year later on with Longtime Friend, a country-styled record about and created during the separation from his sweetheart of a decade. Another Sunsets record signaled a big change back again to the group’s unique sound. Inspired from the murder of their Austin-based patron Esme Barrera and Smith’s psychic connection with another deceased friend, the melancholy however oddly uplifting Antenna towards the Afterworld premiered by Polyvinyl in the first summer season of 2013. Smith adopted this recording in early 2015 with Talent Night time in the Ashram, a assortment of tracks centered around heroes from screenplays and scripts he previously written to different states of conclusion. These personality sketches ultimately morphed from display ideas into tracks, making to get a colorful and extremely cinematic album. Made by tUnE-yArDs’ Merrill Garbus, Sonny & the Sunsets’ 6th full-length, 2016’s Moods Baby Moods, got sonic motivation from ’80s fresh influx and funk.