From the album's running time of 26 minutes (despite having only 3 songs) and the fact that the album opens with clear notes echoing against a fuzzy wall of static, you should be able to surmise a few things. First of all, this is going to be one of them droney/space-rock albums. Second of all, when the vocals chime in after a few minutes, they'll be fairly lethargic, as if the vocalist recorded his tracks 15 seconds after waking up from an all-night bender. Finally, 3 songs is all it'll take to figure out Suntan's entire musical scope.
Suntan are heavily indebted to the psych-rock stylings of groups like The Verve and Spiritualized. But don't expect to hear the same sort of celestial heights that Richard Ashcroft and J. Spaceman routinely brush. Of course, that goes for most bands who attempt such sounds, but Suntan seems especially interested in only sticking to the tried and true. Considering the spacious, trippy sounds they've taken a liking to, there's not a lot of experimentation going on here.
Like most bands who do this sort of thing, they achieve plenty of lush guitar sounds out of their pedals, the drums pound and crash, and the organ pulses and throbs. Occasionally, stray melodic fragments will rise above the jangled web and hint at some darker, more interesting territories ("Soak Up The Rays"), but the band never looks to see where they lead. Rather, they just bury them under another static-riddled wave of guitar fuzz and torrential organ downpour.
That being said, the band are at their best when they bury their heads in the psych and don't come up for air. "Bag It Up" finds the band opting for a more straightforward sound stripped of the golden psychedelia that permeates the other two tracks. Not too surprisingly, it's the weakest track on here. That is, until the final moments when the cascading guitarplay of Nick Holdzkom and Scott Endres leads the band back out there where they obviously long to be.
