Sunshine has been around for a decade, and the sound really is cultivated to the point that one knows that this band has been around for an eternity in band years. Taking equal parts Nine Inch Nails and The Strokes, the opening to “Moonshower and Razorblade”, “What You’rve Got” is an immediate hit for the band, using a distinctive set of vocals to confidently stride forward into new territory. The mixture of traditional rock sounds and the electronic crunch of bands like Depeche Mode and New Order is something that Sunshine pulls off without a flaw, exemplifying the genre during “Victim is Another Name For Lover”.
The songs on “Moonshower and Razorblades” are extraordinarily well-compiled and coherent among the rest of the tracks on the disc. Everything here has the same electronic/rock hybrid, although some tracks are definitely better than the others. For example is “Vampire’s Dance Hall”, which has a thrash/industrial sound not quite unlike early Ministry. Pit material for sure, and much less annoying than “Jesus Built My Hotrod”. This same speeded-up tempo is present on the next track (Never’s Always Never”, but the added amount of synthesizer to the track really changes the context of the sound, changing it from something that vaguely resembled Ministry to something that sounds like “Sacrifice”-era Danzig. The only thing that factors negatively on this disc is the length of some of these songs, which plays into the fact that some of these tracks tread too closely to the rest of the fare on the disc, blurring track lines into one big huge miss.
“Miss Kkarma Kkoma” finds its way into the goth domain, sounding quite like the turn-of-the-1990s style popularized by labels like 4AD and Projekt. The disc ends a slight bit above the fifty-minute mark, and I honestly feel as if this run-time includes some chaff which must be dropped before the band can truly break through in the US market. The band may have toured with Sparta, but the similar sound to all of the tracks on the disc as well as a lack of experimentation (not breaking from the general sound of “Moonshower and Razorblades” even once, not even moving from stereo to live once) really makes this disc suffer. The music sounds good during the first few tracks one listens to, but as the disc spins on, the band closes in on a few specific sounds and fails to attempt to change this fact even the slightest. A greater ear for experimentation would allow for a stronger disc.
Top Tracks: Miss Kkarma Kkoma, Victim Is Another Name For Lover
Rating: 3.6/10
Sunshine – Moonshower and Razorblades / 2004 Custard / 12 Tracks / www.sunshinetrash.com / www.custardrecords.com / Reviewed 28 May 2005
Sunshine Moonshower and Razorblades CD Review
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