A Sunny Day in Glasgow

Photo: Ever Nalens

For music fans of a certain age (say, 34), A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s 2007 debut, Scribble Mural Comic Journal, was a reminder of a time when DIY indie was evolving so rapidly that bands barely had time to perfect an idea before moving on to the next stage of evolution. In other words, the disc was a total hodgepodge: droning dreamy shoegazer one song, shambling C86 twee-pop the next. It was dense but oddly underdeveloped.

The new sophomore album, Ashes Grammar, is another matter. The songwriting’s still all over the place, but this time the scattershot approach works far more coherently, with Ben Daniels’s dreamscapes more head-in-the-sky than eyes-on-the-navel. From the fragmented interludes to more fully fleshed-out tracks such as “Shy” or “Close Chorus,” the disc is reminiscent of (and no less deceptively diverse as) Brian Eno’s ambient-pop masterpiece Another Green World. The collection comes off as cohesive though few traditional “songs” ever emerge out of the masses of shimmering guitars and cooing vocals (courtesy of Annie Fredrickson , who replaces Daniels’s twin sisters, Robin and Lauren). It’s a nifty trick whose various pleasures unfold little by little over repeat listens.

We can’t imagine the Philly group pulling off such a sleight-of-hand act live, minus the mystery of the studio, but at the same time, we imagine some of these half-tunes and fragments will congeal into something clearer before our eyes.

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