Spreading The Wings

There were some tough times recently for San Francisco's Sleepy Sun. Globally lauded for the rambling majesty of their first two albums (2009's Embrace and 2010's Fever), the band was rocked in late-2010 by the mid-tour exodus of female vocalist Rachel Fannan, who left amidst a cloud of acrimony and resentment. Frontman Bret Contantino – who used to share vocal duties with Fannan, but who handles them on his own since her departure – believes in the old adage 'whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger', and that following some brief unrest his band is now back better than ever.

“It's well behind us at this point,” he says of the split. “We kind of went through a transitional phase for about a year, and the record which is just coming out in Australia [2012's Spine Hits] is a part of that transition to adapting to life without Rachel. We always wrote the songs without Rachel so that wasn't really a part of it, but from a live performance perspective she was a big part of the live show, and there were certain parts on the records where the female vocal was the only thing that could be there, so we kind of had to rediscover ourselves, and that record is a part of that experiment. We actually just finished our newest album – we finished recording it just a week ago – so we'll be playing some new stuff when we're in Australia I imagine.”

Spine Hits was something of a departure for Sleepy Sun from the expansive psychedelic rock which characterised their early output – even though it was recorded at Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree, California with QOTSA alumni Dave Catching, it featured more succinct arrangements, and was the band's least experimental record to date. That's all about to change.

“[The new record's] definitely going back to more of the vibe and meditation of space which I believe we did a much better job of expressing on our first couple of albums,” Constantino admits. “Just a kind of respect for space within songs and a kind of patience, trying to create a real vibe and not trying to do so in such a precise manner. It's much more of a confident record than Spine Hits – that to me feels like a record that we had to get out of our system, an attempt to write songs in a very concrete way of expressing an idea and story in a shorter manner of time. So the new one is spacey and very heavy at times, it's very dreamy, and I would hope that it's more transcendent.”

San Francisco is often strongly associated with the psychedelic rock scene, both from an historical '60s perspective and with the current crop of bands who call the city home, but Constantino doesn't see the city as any psych rock Mecca.

“I don't know, it's hard because I'm rarely in town so I don't participate much in the local scene – we don't play San Francisco any more than we play London or someone like that,” he ponders. “We do share a rehearsal space with a band called Assemble Head who are really good, and we're friends with Howlin' Rain – Ethan Miller actually sang on our new record, and Isaiah Mitchell from [San Diegan outfit] Earthless, he played guitar on the new record too – but apart from that I'm not really sure.

“You can walk on Haight Street and buy all the commercialised '60's shit – the Summer of Love and that –but it's not an overt presence. I imagine there was a lot more compassion back then than there is now, I don't really see it in San Francisco.”

Wednesday 20 February - Rosemount Hotel, Perth WA
Thursday 21 February - The Hi-Fi, Sydney NSW
Saturday 23 February - Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne VIC
Sunday 24 February - The Hi-Fi, Brisbane QLD