Austin, Texas band Sun June has a new record on the way. “Bad Dream Jaguar” released in October via Run For Cover Records, marking their first proper follow-up to 2022’s “Somewhere”. Lead single “Get Enough” is a dynamic, expansive folk-pop track that lends an unhurried, gorgeous instrumental to Laura Colwell’s dreamy vocal affectation.
The first two minutes of Sun June’s third album, “Bad Dream Jaguar”, is a reverie – Laura Colwell’s voice floats above a slow-burn, sparse synth, conjuring a tipsy loneliness, a hazy recollection, a disco ball spinning at the end of the night for an empty dancefloor. Sun June’s music often feels like a shared memory – the details so close to the edge of a song that you can touch them. And as an Austin-based project, their music has also always felt strangely and specifically Texan – unhurried, long drives across an impossible expanse of openness, refractions shimmering off the pavement in the heat.
But on “Bad Dream Jaguar”, Sun June sound with the back drop of Texas is replaced by longing, by distance, by transience, and a quiet fear. “Drag me down with the weight, it’s a drug. I never get enough,” Colwell sings. “Even the sky looks menacing. I stayed awake for 48 hours, and it’s all I can do to be lonely. Me and you.” Affixed with Beatles references and psychedelic flair, “Get Enough” is a low-key gem that quickly morphs into a twangy, experimental stunner.
‘Get Enough’ is about spring-time mania, justifying delusions, and losing it but still loving it (Macca forever). It was written when Laura and Stephen [Salisbury] were bouncing back and forth between Texas and North Carolina, each unsure of where life was headed,” the band says about the track. “For the ‘Get Enough” video we wanted to lean into Texas kitsch.
With the album release via Run for Cover, the group—rounded out by vocalist/guitarist Laura Colwell, guitarist Michael Bain, bassist Justin Harris, and drummer Sarah Schultz—on each track, which range in subject matter from unsettling unconscious recollections, to their complicated feelings about their home state, to ultimately “letting go of desire for structure” .
“Most of us are transplants, but we’ve become Texans whether we like it or not. We liked the images of fake cowboying and Texan expanses beneath a busy flight path, and we thought it fit a song that’s about being pulled in different directions and wanting competing things. Visually, we were inspired by “Punch Drunk Love”. We bought a big blue suit and used 1970s anamorphic lenses to distort the image and bend the light.”
Sun June’s records have always been deceptively airy soundingin the face of melancholia, belying its densely textured founda-tion in a sense of ease. The layers on “Bad Dream Jaguar” don’t tangle but they float, sheaths of divergent and luminescent sonics hanging together as the sun goes down, darkness seeping in.
The record exists in the chasm between giving up and going all-in. And a flicker of quiet confidence powering through, a small hopeful glow at its core.
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