Sunchild arrives to considerable fanfare, featuring, as it does, two members of Jazzanova playing song based pop. The pop end of the deal comes from singer/guitarist Sascha Gottschalk, whose songs are enveloped in smooth strings, muted brass, Rhodes piano and other nu-jazz staples.
It is technically proficient stuff with Stefan Liesering and Axel Reinmar carefully putting every sound in its place. There is no dissonance or grit and that is obviously the desired effect, but it does tend to make the music fade into the background after a while as a result. Sometimes there’s the mood of mid-90s St Etienne or Spring, at others the distinct Jazzanova laid back feel, at others it’s just guitar and voice. There are aspirations to late 60s songwriting and production, but this comes more from the Sergio Mendes school than the group’s self-proclaimed Beatlesque desires. The songs themselves, particularly their melodic and harmonic patterns, remind me of nothing more than the early 70s west coast folk rock of America, dominated by major 7ths sung by massed male voices.
I would hesitate to say this is a bad album because, patently, it is beautifully put together and any number of its tracks would be right at home in this summer’s flood of chilled compilations. The components, however, all come from places – nu-jazz, lounge, west coast cool – that are dominated by a smoothness which require a listener probably already far more enamoured of those aspects than I.
Adrian Elmer
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