Sonny and The Sunsets

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As odd as it sounds, one of the things that makes Sonny and the Sunset’s newest record notable, is that it is a real band making real music. Sonny Smith, who is so hyper-creative that he spends time writing novels or making movies when he is not being the band’s frontman, spent the better part of 2010 making up songs for fake bands.

With his “100 Records Project,” Smith worked together with visual artists in order to create record covers for albums by 100 fictional bands. After each cover was created, Smith then went to work crafting a song for the made-up band’s 7” (he did receive some help from members of his band, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer, and the Sandwitches’ Heidi Alexander and Grace Cooper). When all was said and done, Smith had an art installation (complete with a jukebox loaded with digitalized versions of many of his 100 new songs) that he put on display in several Bay Area art houses and New York.

It must have been a relief for Smith to return to the traditional real-band real-record format for the 2011 release Hit After Hit. While there are only 11 tracks on this project, the record seems infused with new en- thusiasm and energy in contrast to 2009’s folky “Too Young to Burn.” On the record Sonny and the Sunsets have a decidedly more upbeat and raw rock and roll sound. In fact, the whole record is something of a séance for ‘60s garage rock tempos and melodies. The opener “She Plays Yo Yo with My Mind,” might as well have been written by The Standells, and the mid- album anthem “Teen Age Thugs” fully resurrects The Kinks.

BRIAN CONANT

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