Delta Spirit
Ode to Sunshine
(Rounder, 2008)

Delta Spirit’s debut album, Ode to Sunshine, is the stuff composed by kids who dug through their parent’s record collections and found their searching, adolescent selves in the worn covers and well-tread grooves of those albums. This is the music of you, of me, of America, the ghosts of our communities and the bright shining flags of our future. Ode to Sunshine is the summer’s perfect soundtrack, a ride on the tailgate of a pickup truck from the well-preserved back country of our lineage, through an expanse of whitewashed suburban homes, and into the hearts of our cities and the collectively driven musical consciousness that pours forth from these epicenters. This is a band that evokes dusty thoughts of nostalgia while maintaining an essential look forward, recalling everyone from the Band, to the Cold War Kids, to Neil Young, to the Byrds, to the blue eyed soul of Van Morrison, all with a hard claim on Southern California that’s entirely their own.

I didn’t know who Delta Spirit was a few months back when they were booked to play San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival, but a friend of mine became a rabid fan and quickly turned me onto them, and now they have a pretty consistent place in my iPod rotation. This is the band that everyone asks about when they hear them for the first time. They have a widely appealing sound, the kind of sound that could, so long as they fall on the right ears, even bring them widespread mainstream accolades. Theirs is the sound of a band on the brink. On the brink of adulthood, on the brink of viable musical success, on the brink of bridging the old and new sensibilities of some of American rock music’s most gripping attributes, which lays the foundation for this band: Solid songwriting, a vital vocalist, guitar twang and throwback melodies and pounding organ, all which culminate in either rousing rockers or soul-baring anthems. This is a great band. I’d go so far to say that they are one of 2008’s shining hopes.

Ode to Sunshine is a clean whistle of an album that maintains its rootsy backbone from start to finish. Jumpstarting the show with the short, folky opener “Tomorrow Goes Away”, it heads into piano-driven territory with “Trashcan” and then the burning “People C’mon” with lines like “If you’re feeling what I’m feeling c’mon / All you soul searchin’ people c’mon” and “And I got something to say my friends / I will never lay down without a fight / And when I die it will be the day / When every one of my wrongs will be made right“ delivered in Matt Vasquez’s rusty yell of a voice.

Things slow down with “House Built for Two” and the shining, warm melodies of “Strange Vine” (“I can afford the truth / We are two Indians in the same canoe / Maybe I’ll just start something new / We’re taking it all to the end”). “Streetwalker” swings to a darker beat, and “People, Turn Around” is a haunting, harmonica-led, Dylan-esque reflection on social concerns: “It’s time all you people turn around / For the life we’ve been living and messin’ around / The blood we’ve been spilling bleed us dry / The life we’ve been killing is a life like mine.” “Parade” is another guitar-heavy, slow-burning, thinkin’ song, and “Bleeding Bells” could be on a Conor Oberst album; it’s visual and nostalgic and lonely, and possibly my favorite song on the record. “Children” is an upbeat, danceable song that invites reciprocal amounts of energy, and closer “Ode to Sunshine” is a warm, waltzing track that perfectly encapsulates all the variables, and overall sensibility, of this album.

There’s a lot of music out there today, and even though some of you folks may remain insistent that we are decades beyond rock ‘n’ roll’s golden age, I dare say we are entering another era of musical excellence. It may be harder to find the gems, but Delta Spirit is one of the bands that encourage me to never stop looking.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

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