A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals - Sweet Trip: Review

Sweet Trip

are a California based electronica, synth pop and experimental rock outfit who released a trio of critically acclaimed records across the 2000's, highlighted by 2003's Velocity : Design : Comfort. After over 10 years of studio album silence, during which the band have developed a massive cult following online, they are back with a 4th Sweet Trip album.

Review By Lav:
Being on the internet too much slowly turned Sweet Trip from a curiosity into a fascination. While they're discography has plenty of worthwhile moments throughout, Velocity : Design : Comfort is where many huge fans focus their admiration, and for good reason. The record is a dynamic and unique fusion of electronica and rock that still sounds so fresh and exciting to this day. I was hesitant to let my anticipation get out of control going into this record, but to some degree it was still really exciting for Sweet Trip To be back. While the 14 tracks and 70 minutes of this record we're always going to make it hard for the album to be perfect, there are plenty of moments here where the band displays their incredible sonic creativity. 

Let's get into the records best moments right out of the gate starting with Chapters. It's another excellent fusion of the dreamy and glitchy sounds that the band is so well known for. It manages to be explosive while the sounds are still so blissful, even somber at points. There's so much emotion draining out of the synths and vocals that make the song an otherworldly experience for me. This is one of the songs on the record I couldn't' wait to come back to over and over. One of the most surprising highlights is Randfilt a three minute instrumental that sees the bands electronica side coming out with a glitchy set of effect heavy synths over a quiet distant hum that creates something very unique. The song is a jittery, awesome and multi-phased instrumental bursting with cool sounds and I couldn't love it any more. 

This record is full of stylistic shifts near constantly, which makes it difficult to generalize the album itself. I will say that the first half of the record has heavy shoegaze and dream pop influences and the band often does quite a lot of good with those layers. Tiny Houses has a dissonant opener to the record with splashes of dense winding electronic instrumentation. Eventually that gives way to a synthetic dreamy build with distant vocals and a very surreal mixing style. It's arrangement channels shoegaze with distant wailing synths dominating the mix and those occasional splashes of dreary vocals. While the formula is something we are all no doubt familiar with but the band does it justice with good songwriting and refreshing instrumental shifts throughout. The Weight Of Comfort, The Rain Is Comfort, The Rain Is You is another highlight. It's a bit more jagged of a track at least initially but it abandons the electronics for a much warmer sound pretty quickly. The percussion is the real high point, crashing into the mix backed up by splashes of synths that give a grandiosity to the whole experience. The song didn't totally hi me at first but with repeat listens its instrumental virtuosity grew on me significantly and I really enjoy it. 

Speaking of excellent drumming In Sound, We Found Each Other has more to offer. I love the songs compositional transitions between sonically intense moments and more reserved ones without ever losing its dreamy layers. There are some wiggly spacey synths on the track that add a lot to it and while the second half may be a bit on the slow side I am already pretty much lost in the tracks sound by that point. This is the first of numerous songs here that feature a glitchy outro that doesn't really have anything to do with the core of the tracks themselves. The next of these songs is eave Foolery Milli Five the first of the records four 6+ minute tracks. It kicks off sounding like the most Slowdive influenced moment on the record so far before the drums start to get much more distorted and the instrumental slowly becomes more unsettling in the process. The song has a really tangible build despite the incredibly patient tempo of the instrumental once it settles in. The sounds around it get grander as the song develops and the increasing wall of synths make it feel larger than life. If you treat the strange outros on these songs more like transitional moments or interludes the whole thing becomes a bit more digestible. 

The second half of the record is far more inconsistent than the first half but it does feature a couple more highlight worthy tracks. Walkers Beware! We Drive Into The Sun may be the poppiest cut on the entire record and fittingly it was released as the albums only single. It finds some very nice moments through that simplicity with some of the albums most direct and catchy refrains and one of its most memorable hooks. It works well as a standalone cut and as a slimmer cut within the somewhat bloated back end of the record. The closing track At Last A Truth That Is Real starts off extremely reserved only occasionally adding in bits of instrumentation or distant vocals to hover over the tracks thin atmosphere. It definitely took me a few times through to see what the band was doing, but even after understanding it better I like the second half of the song a lot more. Once the drums rush in the entire track starts to shine in a totally new way. I like how all-encompassing the closing moments are and how well they serve the end of the record. You is the final track I came away from mostly positive. I love the watery reverbing quality of it and how that melds with the distant very spacey vocal performance. In the back half of the song it pairs and instrumental build that almost feels like slowcore with a very dense atmosphere and glittery chimes that echo their way deep into space backing it. Once again I find the sound pretty compelling, even if the composition doesn't do much to bring it home. 

There are a couple of tracks here like Come Spend The Night and Zafire Melts The Heart In Modulation that sound nice while they're on but don't really last or bring anything too unique to the record. Surviving A Smile is one of the only songs on the first half I wasn't necessarily feeling. It's a more straightforward dream pop cut that brings most of its complexity in the heavy layering of vocals. The instrumental features some steady drums and bright synths, and while I do enjoy parts of the songs sonic approach it feels very complacent being over 5 minutes long. Snow Purple Treasures kicks off with some of the most prominent acoustic guitar the record has to offer. It takes its time introducing new instrumentation on top of this with some abstract synth haze being the only addition until around the 3 minute mark. Those first three minutes can get pretty tedious with the refrains feeling very familiar and the instrumentation not really filling in the gaps. Once the song kicks off it is certainly improved with some of the wiry guitar work at its core. This is another track that really makes me wonder about the time it takes up at 6 and a half minutes. 

Polar Equals really takes its time getting started with almost its entire first half being a steady and honestly rather uneventful build up to an explosive shimmering rush of synths around the 3 minute mark. Suddenly the mix is dense and busy with various measures of instrumentation sort of out of nowhere. Not nearly as out of nowhere however, as the next section around the 4 minute mark that cuts out completely and suddenly the rock band side of Sweet Trip returns with fiery lead guitars transitioning into the next passage. Even that doesn't last long because there's a techno breakdown immediately following. When all of the tracks nearly 7 minutes have gone by I just really don't know what to say. I guess there are parts of it I like but the refusal to settle on any set of sounds that are complimentary of each other is a major head scratching moment. 

A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals is just like it's title, a lot to take in. I haven't even found time to talk about the records lyrical themes which feel a bit disjointed but with how little vocal refrains there are compared to musical elements I find it hard to hold that against the album. When the band is really bringing is a versatile and unique array of sounds. The record is surprisingly obtuse through its runtime with very few moments I would call hooky, but that doesn't make any of its dense and blissful moments any less incredible. The album is full of worthwhile moments of creative sound play, songwriting and mixing, but even with all that attention to detail across these many good ideas, this 70 minutes still feels very long. 

To simplify some rather complicated thoughts I have on the record, it's a fun, versatile array of songs with excellent sonic elements. But simultaneously there are compositions all over the album that leave a lot to be desired, and it's tracklist isn't entirely full of essentials. The record is a return to form for Sweet Trip in some ways and manages to highlight exactly what they've always done well, even if it isn't a constant factor throughout. 7.5/10

Album Cover Review by Tyler Judson:

I don't know if there's anything about this cover I really enjoy. The concept is strange and disjointed and the composition is awkward. I'm not feeling the styling and there's no correlation between the environment, the outfits or the font of the text. Just not it in my opinion. 2/10

For more genre bending indie check out my review of Kero Kero Bonito's Civilization II EP here