I caught the tail end of the acoustic stylings singer-songwriter styling of Devarrow (after hearing a few minutes I’ll definitely check him out) and waited a while to be bathed in sound by Sunsetter, the project of Andrew McLeod. As a consistent collaborator and live performer with Zoon, I’ve seen McLeod before, but this was my first ever Sunsetter show.
The sound man at La Sotterenea seemed to be having some trouble with McLeod’s microphone, but after around 15 minutes of Tim Carelton’s “Opus No. 1” (you know if from being on hold on the phone anywhere in Canada) blasting on the speakers, McLeod strummed his cherry red SG, of which he had three, and the show was on. Sunnsetter utilizes a healthy mix of shoegaze with pedals that, added up, probably cost thousands of dollars, but their tones are just like honey. He also loves to loop a line off one guitar and switch to the next. I was half expecting him to pull out a whammy bar and slam some glide guitar vibratos, but he didn’t which was a breath of fresh hair. Too many shoegaze artists overuse the Kevin Shields techniques.
The vocals for Sunnsetter, for the most part, are quite simple, coming from Mcleod’s worn voice, sometimes a combination of Billy Corgan’s and Mark Gardener’s, touching on the themes of death, isolation, and love; very shoegazey. The audio levels seemed to be all over the place, bouncing from extremely loud to hushed murmurs, which definitely lost some people. Regardless, those down for a sleepy sound bath got one. I’ll definitely be checking out the upcoming album, Heaven Hang Over Me, in November, especially when I have the urge to astral project.
