Angus Stone's mellow alt rock solo debut
What makes singer-songwriters put such miserable themes to such delicately beautiful music is one of those things that concerns me. It creates this wonderfully mellow vibe, yet you’re constantly on edge listening to it. Angus Stone’s alternative debut, as Lady Of The Sunshine, is summed up by its title and cover art nicely; something sweet and harmless, but also fierce and threatening. It’s also his debut album away from his day job alongside his sister Julia.
Opener ‘Silver Revolver’ is a gorgeous summery acoustic track, but it’s the flowing ‘Home Sweet Home’, including its sweet/disturbing child chorus that encapsulates both the innocence and the darkness that flows through the alternative music scene. Apparently the choir is from his old primary school, which adds to the whole home-made and personal vibe without being too preachy or uncomfortable listening.
The electric guitars are introduced for the darker riffing of ‘White Rose Parade’ and the heavy ‘Smoking Gun’, which are a fuzz of modern blues rock somewhere between early White Stripes and a stripped-back Black Stone Cherry, with roots in Zeppelin and nineties stoner rock.
The barren guitar twang opening of ‘Jack Nimble’ is reminiscent of a more acoustic ‘Thirteen Tales…’ era Dandy Warhols, but with strained, almost sleepy singer-songwriter vocals over the sparse instruments. Heartfelt and delicate, it’s emotional but basic. ‘Big Jet Plane’ is a steady strings-laden ballad that doesn’t stray too far from the quiet-voiced acoustic alt rock that is the mainstay of this album. If you like the Magic Numbers, this is the voice and sound that influenced them, and it’s very obvious on this laid-back track in particular.
‘Daisychain’, ‘The Wolf’, and ‘Dead Mans Train’ are mid-tempo hazy-voiced slices of pop-rock, that aren’t exceptional but keep the mood of the album bubbling along nicely, alongside the little-girl-lost lyrics of ‘Anna’ and the solid acoustic/electric blues mixture of ‘Kings Black Magic’. But the delicate falsetto of ‘Lady Sunshine’ is just beautiful, a modern equivalent of the hippie strum of Zeppelin’s ‘Going To California’ or ‘That’s The Way’.
What mystifies me (other than the ‘Wizard of Oz’ guard chant at the end of the last song - you’ll see what I mean) is the moniker Stone chose for this project. It would have been far better to just put it out under his own name. Lady Of The Sunshine doesn’t conjure up the images of the bluesier elements of this record, but it does encapsulate the mellow summery vibe. ‘Smoking Gun’ is a mature and diverse solo album, which doesn’t stray too far from Stone’s signature sound, yet sustains its interest across 12 songs. A perfect accompaniment to an alternative summer.