Noise Pop: Sleepy Sun makes us hallucinate

Pub date February 27, 2009
SectionNoise

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By L.C. Mason

You know that mindspace between the blissed-out haze of a daydream and the rush of reality’s iron grip – that sense of profound escapism that has its claws sunk deep into both truth and fantasy? Getting there takes just the right musical ingredients – and the sky-scraping psych-blues reveries of San Francisco’s Sleepy Sun were last night’s one-way ticket to that destination.

The sextet exploded like a supernova onstage at Bottom of the Hill Feb. 25, leaving no room for dissenters. Sleepy Sun wove the edges of darkness with revelatory rays of light by mixing brain-sizzling guitar solos and leaden grooves with fistfuls of soaring vocals like nouveaux flower children carrying the torch for their blissed-out hippie predecessors.