- In the time since yesteryear’s Joyful Hesitation EP, Syrup, Go On’s sound hasn’t changed, but has certainly become more polished. Indeed fans of the EP may find their wishes well served by this debut full-length effort, assuming their wishes were “this, but more and better”.
Across the record’s thirty-nine minutes the Gold Coast band blend a number of distinct but related styles covering surfy, indie guitar pop, reverb heavy psychedelic pop and dream pop and shoegaze. These styles conjure different feelings of course, and while the record sometimes evokes standing on a beach, feeling the cool sea-breeze on a warm, early spring day, it can effortlessly switch to the unrelentingly warm and noisy embrace more reminiscent of sleeping in, under your own body weight’s worth of blankets, in the dead of winter. What’s impressive about this blend of aural textures is that they change so easily, so naturally, never feeling forced or out of place even when the change happens within a single song.
Last Light isn’t just about sonic landscapes though, the album also delivers a heavy hit of memorable hooks. I found myself singing along with the lead guitar in many of the songs on just my second listen to the record. It’s not that the writing is overly predictable or derivative, the music just goes where it should; the songs feel like they could have been pulled into existence in their complete form, birthed by the band rather than authored by them. To say this of course is to rob the band of the credit they deserve for a long and considered production process spanning twelve months and multiple song iterations.
The album form is also given a respect worth mentioning. Last Light is definitely an album, not just a collection of songs, and this is emphasied by the tracks running gaplessly for most of the second side of the record. You get sucked in and really lose yourself in the music, which makes it all the more jarring when -at the climax of the penultimate track- it abruptly cuts, before hesitantly reprising, a cappella, in the sixty-nine second title track. This is the one moment that really catches you offguard and makes you think rather than feel.
Syrup, Go On have made an excellent album in Last Light. It won’t appeal to everyone of course, if layers upon layers of dreamy sounds washing over you isn’t your cup of tea then this isn’t the record that will change your mind. What it is, however, is very definitely a debut the Gold Coast band can and should be proud of.
- Sam Gunders.