“The world is trash”—but the Brooklyn dream-punk band’s debut single is pretty damn great
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Celebration and stagnation. Breakups and breakdowns. Blood, sweat and tears (and fears and beers). Fails and fantasies and falling in(/out of) love.
In a sense, records are sonic time capsules, pressing into permanence the emotions, experiences, miles and memories logged by the artist(s) during a period of months or years, entire decades or even just days.
And while it’s easy to listen to a good album on repeat without reading too much into all that…. just letting the sounds wash over you, bopping and bobbing and singing along without thinking too hard… even when you do listen deeper and spend time analyzing lyrics and sounds, you’ll likely still never know the true stories behind the songs or the life—lives—the artists responsible was living as they wrote (and rewrote) and recorded and released them.
But sometimes you’re lucky, and the musician will offer a little insight—some behind-the-scenes action that’s less about the process and more about what they were processing.
With that, I’m super thrilled to premiere the first track of “Alright”: the (very good) first single from Little Sun‘s forthcoming debut record Rainbow Body—plus a bit of the story behind the (very good) album from the band’s Ryan Lloyd.
But first, we listen:
Damn, I love it.
Rainbow Body is years (and years) in the making: half composed after a bad breakup and worse accident left Ryan Lloyd both heartbroken and bedridden for six months, unsure when (or if) he’d be able to play the guitar again; the rest was written in one-song spurts leading up to that period, as the artist navigated relationships, travel and tragedy in his twenties.
“There’s a song from most if not every year of my twenties,” Ryan told me of the second half of the record over email. “I’ve bopped around the country in that time, gotten sober or sober-ish a a few times, lost my father, moved around like the ground was made of lava… yada yada. Most importantly I’ve met beautiful people, and we’ve helped and loved each other along the way.”
While you can’t listen to the entire record yet, when you approach it with open ears and mind a little down the line, I hope you’ll be able to experience it with not just the appropriate damn-that-sounds-good reaction (because. spoiler alert: it really does) but also the realization that, man, there’s a whole lotta life behind it.
And until the release of Rainbow Body, we have this very rad first taste in the form of the very alright alright “Alright” (sorry).
“‘Alright’ to me is about someone experiencing some waking paralysis from seeing infinite sides of the coin,” Ryan explained. “Grey world, where nothing is black and white. Getting fed up with how ambiguous life is and shooting from the heart. A coming-of-age tale… again and again.”
Speaking of coming of age, the band asked their friend Charlie (Horse) what he would tell his child if he had a “little son.” His response—one of many secret cameos on the album—kicks off the record in 2020/1-perfect fashion:
“Sorry about the world. The world is trash…”
But for (much-needed) optimism’s sake, you gotta love the next line:
“But… you’re alright… It’ll be alright….”
I’ll take it.
Stay tuned for the band’s next single in two weeks + their record (on hand-dubbed tapes with an accompanying zine!) two weeks after that! In the meantime, please join me in running this sweet, sweet single on repeat—
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Little Sun is Ryan Lloyd, Eric Benoit and Dalton Patton. Follow them at @littlesunband, find the song on SoundCloud and buy their music at littlesun.bandcamp.com.
Feature image provided by the band.
Art: Anna Gemo