Dorks And Losers

It’s not that uncom­mon to see musi­cians pur­sue side projects as a way to deal with band off­sea­sons or artis­tic and cre­ative dif­fer­ences. It’s even more uncom­mon to see musi­cians pur­sue side projects with every mem­ber of your orig­i­nal band, at once.

While the details are some­what fuzzy, it seems Sun­fold has been around for a pretty long time. Orig­i­nally called Sedona, the six-piece out­fit from North Car­olina is also the six-piece out­fit from North Car­olina called Annu­als. Won­der­ing which came first? Don’t ask, I have no idea.

Kenny Flo­rence (gui­tar, vocals) leads the sis­ter project with Annu­als front­man Adam Baker (drums) tak­ing backup duties. It’s refresh­ing to see such artis­tic cama­raderie in what appears to be one gigan­tic game of musi­cal chairs. I wouldn’t be sur­prised to see fel­low mates Mike Robin­son (bass), Zack Oden (gui­tar), Donzel Rad­ford (drums), or Anna Spence (key­board) guide the next project.

On the their MySpace page, the band reveals that “the pur­pose of Sun­fold is to redis­cover the sense of unin­hib­ited explo­ration of melody and har­mony that is always present in the pio­neer­ing of a genre and mold it into a sound that is reflec­tive of past and present musi­cal par­a­digms, with­out get­ting stuck in any par­tic­u­lar formula.”

You can sense the slight irony in that state­ment given the band’s reluc­tance to add or sub­tract from itself, but as the band puts it, “Kenny has found him­self sur­rounded by a group of close friends and tal­ented musi­cians who share his insis­tence on con­stantly mov­ing forward.”

Annu­als lis­ten­ers were given a taste of Sun­fold on their last EP Wet Zoo. Sur­pris­ingly, none of EP’s two Sun­fold songs “Between The Worlds” or “Water­ing Pail” make it on the debut album LP.

Toy Tug­boats can best be described as hav­ing an old-fashioned charm. There is a pre­dom­i­nately blues sen­si­bil­ity, rang­ing from a very enjoy­able uptempo jazz hybrid in “Sailed Off To Sea” to a slow bal­lad in “Gno­sis” to an even more slow and more min­i­mal­ist bal­lad in “To Wake The Eye.”

While a major­ity of their songs are geared toward marathon slow dance and make-out ses­sions, Sun­fold does the occa­sional impromptu blue­grass jam “Shapeshiftin’,” the pseudo elec­tronic blues num­ber “Gorgée De Rubis,” as well as the pop rock anthem “Ore­gon” — Kenny’s ode to one of his favorite states.

Toy Tug­boats is the cul­mi­na­tion of years of writ­ing and com­pos­ing over the course of sev­eral years dur­ing tour trav­el­ing and basi­cally with any free sec­ond the musi­cians had. The album’s con­sis­tency is remark­able. Never flashy and never overt, Sun­fold gives Annu­als a run for their money.

[pho­tos via Sneak Attack Media]
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Track list:

1. Ore­gon
2. Shrink­ing The Sphere
3. Sailed Off To The Sea
4. Gno­sis
5. To Wake The Eye
6. Gorgée de Rubis
7. Shapeshiftin’
8. Sara The Amer­i­can Win­ter
9. Osk
10. Hold­ing The Charm

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