Shapeshifting Calgary post-punks Sunglaciers are back with Regular Nature, their danceable, thrashable, face-melting new record out now on Mothland.
The album moves with all the confidence of a sprawling rock epic and none of the self-indulgence, guiding listeners through the band's kaleidoscopic styles and penchant for high-energy barnburners and sweeping soundscapes.
Regular Nature's intense, colourful sonic world is offset by its careful, introspective lyricism, with some songs "basking in positivity, optimism, love and assertiveness, others coaxing feelings of reflection, uncertainty and dread." It's an escape from the techno-nightmare of modern life, a dreamworld that offers gentle breathing space and necessary confrontation.
Co-produced by Chad VanGaalen, mixed by engineer Mark Lawson and featuring a guest appearance by Zoon's Daniel Monkman, Regular Nature finds Sunglaciers reaching new peaks. In a statement about the record, the quartet wrote:
We wanted to make a concise yet explosive record, continuing to find the balance between familiar and novel sounds and approaches. We have not and may never make "dance music," but we make continued efforts to bring sounds that we like from dance and electronic genres into our own, delighting in the process as much as the product. We love to play and experiment, defying expectations and discovering new sounds. This record shows how these novel (to us) elements interact with the rock and roll world we comfortably inhabit.
We want to make you dance. We want to make you think. We want to make you think while you're dancing and dance while you're busy thinking. This is an album for the body, brain and heart. It's compassionate, frustrated, communal and dreadful. In a world of information overload, where everything comes at you at once, Regular Nature is trying to normalize the phenomenon. This is chaotic music for a chaotic world, a three-way conversation between outer self, the subconscious and the mad world. As expressed on penultimate track "One Time or Another": "There's always somebody talking."
Stream Regular Nature below.
