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Sonny

Sonny & The Sunsets prep new LP co-produced by The Shins' James Mercer (stream a track)

Sonny & The Sunsets are set to release new album, Hairdressers From Heaven, on April 1. Sonny made in Portland with producers James Mercer and Yuuki Matthews of The Shins, and it features appearances by old friends and sometimes Sunsets members Kelley Stoltz and Shayde Sartin (The Fresh & Onlys). We’ve got the premiere of the country-ish “Take A Hard Look Down the Long Corridor,” which Sonny says he wrote years back after nearly drowning in the Pacific. “In Portland last summer, working with James Mercer and Yuuki Matthews, recording for this album, we were just having a lot of fun, hangin out in this back yard clubhouse that James has, kind of reminded me of being in my friends treehouse when I was a kid,” says Sonny. “Except it was grown-ups making records and drinking Tecates. So there was this vibe, a kind of casual atmosphere, and you can really hear James and Yuuki’s masterful singing pierce through, and it felt quite nice to put a song about death and drowning to this casual countrified vibration.” You can stream it below.

Sonny & The Sunsets will be touring this spring, including a Brooklyn show at The Bell House on April 19 which is with Kelley Stoltz both opening and as part of The Sunsets, plus Seattle’s The Purrs. (it will be Kelley’s first show here in some time.) Tickets for that show will be on sale soon, and all dates are listed below.

Hairdressers From Heaven will be the first release on Rocks In Your Head Records, a new label Sonny Smith just started. He named it after the great NYC independent record in SoHo that closed back in 2006, which Sonny used to hang out at and “uplifted me in a way only old record stores can.” He also invisions Rocks In Your Head as taking a stand against the tech-and-condo-ification of his hometown of San Francisco. “There are good bands in this city. There are great artists making bizarre shit. There are underground HAPPENINGS. There are SECRET shows. There are artists in the streets duking it out with Nazis. Shit is going down…Humbly, this label is our version of throwing nails at the tank tires.” All Rocks In Your Head releases will come with a zine (“like the days of SST and Raymond Pettibon”), and a compilation of the current S.F. scene is on the way. There’s an indiegogo campaign for Rocks In Your Head and you you can watch a video about it below.

sonny-sunsets

Hairdressers From Heaven tracklist:
1. A Bigger Picture
2. Ghost Days
3. Another Life, Another Body
4. Searchin’
5. Someday I’d Like To Be An Artist
6. Hairdressers From Heaven
7. Take A Hard Look Down The Long Corridor
8. Man Without A Past
9. Drug Lake

Sonny & The Sunsets – 2019 Tour Dates
April 4th – Sisters, OR // The Suttle Lodge @ Deschutes National Forest
April 5th – Seattle, WA // Sunset Tavern
April 6th – Seaview, WA // Sou’wester Historic Lodge
April 7th – Portland, OR // Mississippi Studios (with Kelley Stoltz)
April 19 – Brooklyn, NY // Bell house (with Kelley Stoltz and Purr)
May 16 – San Francisco, CA // The Chapel
May 17 – Soquel, CA // Michaels on Main
May 18 – Big Sur, CA // Hipnic XI
May 23 – Los Angeles, CA // Zebulon