Sunbeam Sound Machine

Nick Sowersby makes psych-pop the way it was intended – as a vehicle for internal exploration, writes ANNIE TOLLER.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Sunbeam Sound Machine’s Nick Sowersby grew up in Seaford, a coastal town in Melbourne’s outer reaches. His music – booming, cheerful psychedelia –distinguishes itself from the ratbag garage bands overrunning the rest of the eastern seaboard for something more introspective. His debut album, Wonderer, is closer in conception to Tame Impala’s loner rock: headphones music aimed at escapism at a minimum and catharsis at best. The result is as affable and introverted as the image of Sowersby himself, with his patchy blonde stubble, bashful smile and tangled hair, experimenting with drum sounds and tape loops in the garage of his Collingwood home.

By no means a ’60s dogmatist, Sunbeam Sound Machine nonetheless makes psych-pop in just the way it was intended – as a vehicle for internal exploration. As the title suggests, Wonderer takes the form of a question, and an open-ended one at that, moving from a state of existential handwringing towards something more like affirmation. Sowersby strikes a childlike pose over the course of the first three tracks, naïve and openhearted. Wracked by “the big questions,” he circles endlessly around the opening track’s single line: “What should I do with the life I’m living?”

His indecision seems to come from a preoccupation with doing right rather than a place of infantile narcissism. It’s refreshing, nonetheless, when he ditches the navel-gazing in the record’s second half, adopting an attitude of innocent inquiry worthy of the patchouli-sniffing ponchos in the Incredible String Band. This thematic turn might seem over-earnest to a generation raised on hashtag witticisms and the sociopathic comedy of Seinfeld. But it suits Sowersby, who describes himself as “a fairly relentless optimist.”

Wonderer betrays grander ambitions than Sowersby’s previous efforts: the two EPs released side by side in 2013 after Sunbeam Sound Machine was picked up, almost by chance, by Remote Control. Those EPs, One and Sunbeam Sound Machine, are dog-eared but to the point, lurching from boisterous indie pop to a kind of Tex-Mex folk music in the style of Love’s Forever Changes. Whatever the EPs lack in purpose, the songwriting talent is obvious.

“Some of the crackle has gone, allowing more detail to emerge.”

The new album, however, is a far more unified statement. Mixing from King Gizzard’s Stu Mackenzie and mastering from industry golden boy Andrei Eremin have taken these songs widescreen. They still sound washed out and in space, but some of the crackle has gone, allowing more detail to emerge. According to Sowersby, One was recorded “on Garageband using the Mac microphone” and mixed “using a $15 pair of bud headphones, so … it could only get better from there.”

Composed of loops, samples and layer upon layer of guitar and vocals, the melodies on Wonderer unspool effortlessly. They suggest an affinity with acts like Caribou and Panda Bear, and the harmonies and big bass drums recall both The Beach Boys and Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” production. Sowersby has a knack for taking a repetitive phrase and making it flower. As on the album’s best moments – the one-two punch of ‘Real Life’ and ‘In Your Arms’ – his songs have a way of spinning into euphoria, spurred by a burst of compression or the crack of a wildly panned snare. (He also seems to be one of a few people in indie pop these days who’s not afraid of a good drop).

On their own, most of these songs stand up well. But, run together, moments that were individually effervescent begin to sound one-note, the dynamics muted by a glut of sound. Most tracks contain 10-15 guitar parts alone, and each element is heavily processed, almost splintering under the weight of effects. There comes a point where you wish Sowersby would switch off the phaser already and let the songs shine through, invoking some of the raucous energy of his earlier material. Each song has its moments of clarity, though. One feature that tends to cut through is the bass, which in Sowersby’s hands has Nicholas Allbrook levels of dexterity and bounce. The experiments with percussion, developed while listening to ’90s turntablism and East Coast rap, are also effective.

All the same, Wonderer’s last track – its simplest – comes as a relief after the constant swell and fade of distortion. ‘Sailing Away’ is built around a single phrase, a riff lilting in repose, like a ship in gentle waters. As always, the guitar is trailed by delay like a comet’s tail, but there’s an elegant restraint to the composition. By now the album has also shed the overtones of a quarter-life crisis – though Sowersby hasn’t resolved the unease so much as come to accept the fact of a world in motion. Letting go of futile anxieties, he finds that life no longer outpaces him; now it seems that “time is right on track.” After long submersion in a strange atmosphere of noise and contemplation, he’s ready to step out of his head and into clearer air.

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‘Wonderer’ is out now on vinyl and digital through Dot Dash/Remote Control. Sunbeam Sound Machine will play the Kyneton Music Festival this Saturday (Feb 21); play the Inca Roads festival near Ballarat the weekend of Friday, March 20 to Sunday, March 22; and support Spookyland at The Spotted Mallard in Melbourne on Thursday, March 26.