With their whimsical sound and magnetic qualities, A Sunny Day in Glasgow has helped to define the landscape of indie-pop, combining a dreamlike aesthetic with an uncanny ability to create accessible yet multi-dimensional feel-good music. However, despite the 22-track listing of their 2009 sophomore record, Ashes Grammar, the band was not at a loss for material, having been left with an abundance of songs in need of a home. Cue: The Nitetime Rainbows EP, the latest release from the Philadelphia six-piece, which continues to boast their trademark whimsy as well as three unique remixes.
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“There’s this kind of pressure – you’ve got to be prolific,” explained lead member Ben Daniels. “It’s like you have a great album out [but] everybody’s in a band now. Which is great, but it’s kind of like you get less mileage out of an album now. So you’ve got to keep things coming out to stay in people’s minds, I think.”
While recording Ashes Grammar throughout fall and winter 2008, the band quickly realized that unless they were willing to put material aside, they’d be sentenced to an additional year in the studio.
“We started recording it by September 2008 and by late October we had to have a talk and be like, ‘We’re not going to finish all these songs and if we try to work on all of them, we’ll be recording for another year’,” shared Daniels. “So we set some aside to work on later, and just [focused] on the ones that were Ashes Grammar. But yeah, it took six months to record it so there’s a lot of stuff there. . . . We still have like, another album’s worth of songs from then that we’re hopefully going to get out at some point – but we liked these songs, [and] we just didn’t finish them in time.”
After being hailed as one of 2009’s musical victories, Ashes Grammar helped further expand the band’s cult following while solidifying their status as critical darlings. But where other groups have simply fallen victim to their acclaim and been branded “buzz bands”, A Sunny Day in Glasgow have worked to achieve longevity over hype.
“It’s weird – at first, it kind of seemed like . . . it came out and people sort of missed it,” revealed Daniels. “It didn’t seem like anything. But it kind of stayed around and people kind of got into it slowly, I think. But it’s strange – I don’t know. At first, I was like ‘People don’t seem to like this one as much as Scribble Music Comic Journal’ but I think that’s switched now, and I think people are enjoying the record. I don’t know if the reception’s impacted anything in terms of song writing or anything, but it’s nice that people are enjoying it.”
While the group have become accredited members of the indie community, the band has fallen under the umbrella of “pop” – the vast and indefinable category that houses everyone from The Beatles to Lady Gaga. However, Daniels maintains that while the genre is ever-changing, a pronounced shift in pop conventions and what defines them is still questionable.
“[With] pop music, I guess the sound kind of changes but the structure always kind of stays the same,” he elaborated. “It’s typically always “verse-chorus-verse” – or hook – so that never changes about it, but maybe the aesthetic might change a bit. But the structure’s still there. [And] as for a shift [in pop], I don’t know – it’s hard to tell when you’re in the middle of things . . . It kind of seems like people are more into lots of things now than they were previously – but I don’t really pay attention much. . . . [But in regards to mainstream versus indie pop], production values seem to be the biggest defining feature there. Because anything – anything – can be mainstream now.”
As music works to become more complex in the wake of merging genres and higher expectations, bands like A Sunny Day in Glasgow have been praised for producing music that requires attention and an ear for detail. However, with the recent trend of minimalist acts, fans may see the band begin moving in a simpler direction.
“I don’t know if [pop] will become simpler again, [but] that’s kind of the direction I hope to take on the next record ,” shared Daniels. “I hope we can tear things down, because Nighttime Rainbows – I love that song – but there’s something like 150 tracks on that [it] that are not all playing at once. We’re mixing that, and it’s kind of like ‘how does this happen?” [So] we’re going to try and avoid that in the future.”
“I think what’s really popular now is really simple, stuff like The xx or Vampire Weekend, and it’s wonderful, you know?” he continued. “So basic. It works well. . . . It’s a good time to be making music.”
