There is a lot to unpack in Quality Living’s latest single, so without resorting to my usual, slightly tangential preamble, I’m going straight in. (About time, I hear you cry.)
“Sumac Red” is a complex and ornate sonic affair, seemingly quite chaotic to begin with, but once you get your ear in and your brain attuned, these ebbs and flows of motif and melody, riff and groove, the constantly changing sonic emphasis on one instrument or another, like a half planned jam, coellesce into something at once slightly ragged and wonderfully arranged. It’s the sound of a band with just enough looseness and swing in their playing, but totally on their game…the perfect place from which to make music.
The more you play the song, the more rewarding and revealing it becomes, the more you can appreciate just how well-woven everything is – the clean guitar riffs, the soaring steel pedal, the bass grooves, the unfussy yet perfectly placed beat, and of course the wit and wisdom found in the lyrics.
Teasing Glacier, due out later this year, “Sumac Red” leaves you making a mental note to pick up that album as soon as is humanly possible. After all, if one single can deliver this much finesse and finery, delicacy and deftness, rock drive and quintessentially American sounding indie, imagine what delights a full album will hold!
