I've been in Austin taking in South By Southwest (SXSW) and looking for San Antonio connections. One of those is Bright Like The Sun, a 5-man San Antonio band. You can tell by their sound (Hit "Listen" above to hear them) they’re not a standard dance band. I spoke to two of the guitarists, Rob Mochen, and Chris Etheridge. Here’s Chris, then Rob.
"As opposed to verse/chorus, verse chorus, we try to proceed in movements. And generally we like the movements to get bigger and bigger and bigger."
"Our songs are long, drawn-out, very theatrical. And the ending in most of our songs doesn’t sound like the beginning."
The twenty-something guys are focused, articulate and while they look at home on stage, they also look almost like they’d be comfortable in a corporate office. And their songs seem more like sound tracks than something you’d hear on the radio. If you’re familiar with Pink Floyd, they’re somewhat reminiscent of them. Here’s Chris again.
"We write music as if you’re watching a movie, as opposed to watching a short snippet or a commercial. We try to write with a beginning and middle and an end with different movements to carry a listener through the emotions we I were feeling at the time we wrote them."
I went to see them live at a SXSW event Wednesday night. The band features a drummer, bass player and three guitarists. Two of those guitarists also play keyboards. Each guitar is run through a dozen or more different effects pedals—echo, reverb, and other effects--giving their music a highly layered vibe that Chris likens to a wall of sound.
"I would say it’s definitely a modern take on Phil Spector. A lot of the stuff he did with the girl bands in the 60s is amazing. 90% of the time our guitars don’t even sound like guitars. And our pianos don’t sound like pianos and our vocals don’t sound like vocals. And I think that’s just looking for the right textures and developing the right sounds."
As to how they do what they do, here’s Rob Mochen.
"We start with a core idea and then we add to it, but we’ll add to it through like a jam session…we record some of our practices…we try to emulate what we recorded at practices just naturally."
They’ve got a third album coming out next month, and they’ve scheduled a record release at the 502 club in San Antonio. Then they have a month-long tour they’re heading out on. Here’s Rob.
"We’ll be hitting the road late July through August. We’re going to be going east coast this time…all the way up to Boston/New York extensively following the release of the album."
We’ve got more on Bright Like The Sun here.
