A Sunny Day in Glasgow
“Drink drank drunk”
from Autumn, again
self-released, August 20, 2010
Download the album when it comes out on October 19 here
The strongest moments in A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s songs usually don’t come right away. They tend to emerge at some point deeper into the track at hand–an insistent beat, a plinky-plunky string-instrument hook, a vocal line given sudden luminous solidity after a few minutes of amorphousness. “Drink drank drunk” does it backwards. “When you say I’m alright / this happens all the time / when you stay out all night / without you I’ll just die” is how it begins, the vocals unusually firm and clear as a bell. Then, as a toe-tapping beat kicks in, “When you stop, I’ll stop, okay,” repeated four times, mantra-like, the “‘kay” splitting off into high-pitched harmony each time. And then? Blam! Swirly, buzzy, happy wall-of-sound in the mighty Sunny Day in Glasgow manner, getting progressively more swirly and buzzy and happy for the duration of the song until it sort of tinkles and shudders to a close. The only truly decipherable lyrics after everything kicks in are a semi-triumphant-sounding “Hold my head / I can’t find the keys to my house / I’m never going home again.” If we are to take the song’s conjugated title as a roadmap, that opening section is first a reason to drink, and then a quick four-shot montage sequence of the singer and someone else egging themselves on into inebriation, a state that the rest of the song evokes to a nicety. Which is a rare thing, actually. I’ve heard plenty of music that sounds like being stoned or tripping, but capturing that headlong jovial buzz a night of low-impact yet still purposeful drinking gives you, until you finally stumble into bed and swing out into sleep? That’s quite a feat, and hangover-free.