Sonny Smith writes songs so catchy they sound familiar on the first listen. He’s displayed this skill in the past on a series of albums that featured such heavy-hitters as Neko Case, Jolie Holland, Mark Eitzel, and Wilco’s Leroy Bach. In fact, he’s so preternaturally gifted with a sense of the melodic and harmonic tropes of various pop music genres that he even created a conceptual art piece comprising 100 45s, featuring two songs each by invented bands he wrote and recorded the music for. Such larks have been perpetrated before, but rarely if ever with the scope and assured execution Smith exhibited.
With the Fat Possum release of Tomorrow is Alright, an album originally released on Soft Abuse last year, Smith should reach a somewhat wider audience he definitely deserves. On the album, Sonny & The Sunsets play an old-style rock ‘n’ roll with country and doo-wop influences, Beach Boys-style harmonies thrown in to sweeten the pot. The Sunsets feature members of The Fresh & Only and Thee Oh Sees, and while San Fransisco resident Smith displays some of the traits of his garage band peers, he’s really more of a fellow traveler than a card-carrying member of the cadre of buzzed-about lo-fi/garage bands he shares a city with. He does have a penchant for slightly echo-y, let’s say ‘medium-fi’ recording, but he has a much lighter touch overall. His odd, faux naïf sense of humor is perhaps best exemplified in the space narrative “Planet of Women,” a pulpy, 1950s-era sci-fi tale featuring spoken background vocals that mock the self-pitying narrator.
After nine affecting toe-tapping tunes, the band takes a break from three-minute pop songs for “Lovin’ On An Older Gal,” which vamps on the proto-motorik rhythm and guitar fills from The Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting for the Man” for an extended rave-up that ends the album on a fun note. Okay, sure, there’s nothing you haven’t heard before on Tomorrow is Alright, but that’s alright. This never has and never should stop you from listening to a collection of smart, catchy rock ‘n’ roll songs. Tomorrow is Alright is the perfect album to see you through the end of summer and take you into the fall.
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