Sundae Painters: S/T (Leather Jacket)
This sounds like the second record from a very inspired and talented band in their twenties; so much heat and bounce balanced by a full awareness of how to make music the way they want. A close to perfect album.
From our own Brian Turner, commenting on a band filled with his close friends and colleagues:
“Finally released, the fruits of a 2020 recording session from the Sundae Painters, a bittersweet coda to mark nearly a year to the date the world lost Hamish Kilgour.
Indeed, it's a wonderful, incandescent record to bask in the glow of not only the spirit of Hamish (whose presence looms large on his melodic/shamanistic perch with definite touchstones to his Clean/Mad Scene/Bailter Space/solo work), but also New Zealand vets Kaye Woodward (The Bats), Paul Kean (Bats/Toy Love), Alec Bathgate (Tall Dwarfs/Toy Love) and some friends to aid and abet instrumentally. While I anticipated smatterings of all those bands in this sonic stew, I was unprepared for this great and wholly standalone record.
Full of outward-gazing tribal tom-thump/throb pointing to Hamish's penchant to draw heavily on the VU and Can, there are also absolutely enchanting high watermarks of songcraft from the parties involved; a lot of stepping outside the usual box of these players' better known combos.
Kaye in particular takes spotlight with heavenly vocal contributions, from the brittle and brilliant ‘In Came You,’ stately folkiness on ‘Holloway’ and ‘Hap 2’ and the sublime ‘Thin Air,’ a song I am unabashed to say percolates with a hazy bass-crawl and sweetness that evokes Christine and John McVie trundling through a gorgeous Tusk outtake.
Bathgate and Kilgour's guitars flutter in the sunlight with gorgeous hues, modal Television-esque solo stretches; there's psychedelic backwards vocal echoes, dulcimer, keyboards sounding like sitars flanking layers of feedback.
Despite the peace and love vibes, this record has a bite in all the right spots, particularly in the swelling waves of tumult in the Hamish-crooned, beatnik intonation of ‘Aversion,’ and ‘Sweet Dreams,’ an elegaic one-chord dissonant prayer that was originally played by (but not released by) The Mad Scene during that band's days.
Fans of all these combos will not be disappointed, but uplifted greatly by the Sundae Painters' one and only marvellous LP.”