Gold Dissolves To Gray

Synopsis

The productive Austin-based Sunset, led as ever by founder Bill Baird, returned toward the end of 2009 with Gold Dissolves to Gray, one of his most focused collections of songs to date. As ever working with a shifting crew of performers, Baird aims to create something that seems to live up to both band name and album title, with the glowing haze of songs like "Sunshine Hair" feeling just shrouded enough behind a touch of intentional murk. If the combination of immediate melody, detailed arrangements ("Fishtown" could almost be an easygoing ELO album cut in its cheery post-Beatles, piano-led stateliness, echoed soon thereafter by the instrumental "Green Truck"), and lo-fi sonics is not remarkable in and of itself, after decades of examples in the form, Sunset's sense of how to make the combination turn up gold is the key here. Rather than feeling like an exercise in nostalgia, Gold Dissolves to Gray is somehow perfectly suited for a time when fidelity itself can range from Surround Sound 5.1 precision to the tinniest of MP3 bit rates. Baird further tips his hat to earlier forebears as he goes -- thus, beside the clear nods mentioned earlier, there's the cover of the Melodians' 1972 classic "Rivers of Babylon," which invokes not only the original but, in its easygoing way, Boney M.'s cover of same. Meanwhile, more than once he shows his gift for a wry lyric -- "Garden of Eden" manages the neat trick of sounding like "Big Yellow Taxi" rewritten by Sparks for a history lesson plan, something further accentuated by the '20s jazz arrangement. (If he doesn't try for Russell Mael's falsetto, he does get the speak-sing breaks down.) ~ Ned Raggett