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Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome back to the first ever Northwest Music Month, where we’re spending each day in June turning you onto your new favorite local bands, one band at a time. Some days they could be a band that’s great at writing a catchy song that’s unable to leave your head, other days they could be really out-there and hard-to-pin-down bands. Today’s band sits somewhere in the middle. Let us introduce you to Sun Blood Stories.
Hailing from Boise, Idaho, the four-piece Sun Blood Stories are an epic rock outfit that’s been rocking together for about five years now. Despite being a relatively young band, they’ve managed to entrance a strong fan-base thanks to their sweeping and monolithic songs, which take influence from everything from neo-psychedelic rock to drone music to shoegaze to post-rock, and everything in between. Equal parts music you can vibe out to and music you could ride into battle to, Sun Blood Stories strike the perfect balance between being loose and experimental and being an aurally pleasing and somewhat easy group to listen to.
Sun Blood Stories have a few releases under their belts – a couple EPs here and there, a two-track release with epic 15- and 27-minute pieces – but the best representation of their winning formula is their full-length record Twilight Midnight Morning, which released in June of last year. It’s an impressive record that shows off the band’s versatility without it feeling inconsistent and like they want to try on too many hats all on one album. There are some purely instrumental psychedelic drone pieces on this record, and there are some harder-hitting rock tracks with a male-female vocal dynamic and epic builds, and there’s even a wholly bizarre sample-based interlude to segue between a couple of the louder tracks here.
Good production is always key to making far-reaching bands like Sun Blood Stories work, and the quartet has that in spades. Every drum fill rings clear through the psychedelic haze, the bass lines are rich, the guitar leads are punchy and have a great deal of bite, and the vocals, though they may be somewhat quiet in the mix, complement the desert-like nature of these tracks. Twilight Midnight Morning is certainly a highlight among the current wave of psychedelic rock and post-rock acts trying to relive previous eras of music, as Sun Blood Stories do a good job of modernizing neo-psychedelia and prog rock without feeling like they’re just pulling so obviously from any one group or any one sound.
If Sun Blood Stories has somehow managed to slip under your radar for this long, pick up a copy of Twilight Midnight Morning and become just as enamored as we are. They’re a rewarding group, and definitely one that you need to know about.
You can follow Sun Blood Stories on Facebook and Twitter, and sample their music below via SoundCloud. Find them on Bandcamp at sunbloodstories.bandcamp.com.
If you would like to have your band submitted for a chance to be featured in this segment, consult this link for more information on how you can do so.
