(2022) Sun June - Somewhere [Expanded Edition]          



Review:
Sun June released Somewhere, in February 2021 and now returns with an expanded version and three new songs. Somewhere was a record that felt distinctly more present than its predecessor. In the time since, Colwell and Salisbury have become a couple, and it’s had a profound effect on their work; if Years was about how loss evolves, Somewhere is about how love evolves. “We explore a lot of the same themes across it,” Colwell says, “but I think there’s a lot more love here.” Somewhere is Sun June at their most decadent, a richly diverse album which sees them exploring bright new corners with full hearts and wide eyes. Embracing a more pop-oriented sound the album consists of beautiful new songs and is deliberately more collaborative and fully arranged Laura played guitar for the first time; band members swapped instruments, and producer Danny Reisch helped flesh out layers of synth and percussion that provides a sweeping undercurrent to the whole thing. Throughout Somewhere you can hear Sun June blossom into a living-and-breathing five-piece, the album formed from an exploratory track building process which results in a more formidable version of the band we once knew. ’Real Thing’ is most indicative of this, a fully collaborative effort which encompasses all of the nuances that come to define the album. “Are you the real thing?” Laura Colwell questions in the song’s repeated refrain. “Honey I’m the real thing,” she answers back. They’ve called this one their ‘prom’ record; a sincere, alive-in-the-moment snapshot of the heady rush of love. “The prom idea started as a mood for us to arrange and shape the music to, which we hadn’t done before,” the band explains. “ Prom isn’t all rosy and perfect. The songs show you the crying in the bathroom,, the fear of dancing, the joy of a kiss – all the highs and all the lows.” It’s in both those highs and lows where Somewhere comes alive. Laura Colwell’s voice is mesmerizing throughout, and while the record is a document of falling in love, there’s still room for her to wilt and linger, the vibrancy of the production creating beautiful contrasts for her voice to pull us through. Opening track ‘Bad With Time’ sets this tone from the outset, both dark and mysterious, sad and sultry as it fascinatingly unrolls. “I didn’t mean what I said,” Colwell sings. “But I wanted you to think I did.” Somewhere (Expanded) showcases a gentle but eminently pronounced maturation of Sun June’s sound, a record full of quiet revelation, eleven songs from Somewhere that bristle with love and longing, and three new songs full of soft contemplation. It finds a band at the height of their collective potency, a marked stride forward from the band that created that debut record, but also one that once again is able to transport the listener into a fascinating new landscape, one that lies somewhere between the town and the city, between the head and the heart; neither here nor there, but certainly somewhere.



Track Listing:
1. Reminded – bonus track (4:25)
2. Easy – bonus track (4:01)
3. Bad with time (3:14)
4. Everything I had (4:07)
5. Singing (3:00)
6. Bad girl (4:08 )
7. Karen O (3:17)
8. Everywhere (4:09)
9. Once in a while (4:15)
10. Finding out (3:12)
11. Seasons (3:54)
12. Real thing (4:24)
13. Colors (3:02)
14. Tom Petty – bonus track (2:00)


Media Report:
Genre: dream-pop, indie-rock
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits