If you like The Clash, The Damned, The Ramones, or any of the 80’s “The [__]” punk pioneers, you need Sun Room on your radar immediately.
The band’s sun-drenched, speedy and exhilarating new EP, OUTTA THEIR MINDS, has the kind of tempo that would prompt you to jump on your feet, jump start a car and jump the gun on your most impulsive decision. If anything, the hint lays in the track list: three out of the four tracks’ got car-adjacent names. “Cadillac” may have a touch more swagger than “Kaden’s Van,” but “Kaden’s Van” captures the kind of whirlwind frenzy on the road like no other. With a name like “Sunset Garage,” you may not have expected a dazzling, sweetly cadenced love song, but the EP’s third track takes a timely breather to swing like the gorgeous Santa Monica high tides. The EP’s title and final song feels like a perfect sampler that captures all the best characteristics of the prior tracks, if anything, leaves you with an insatiable craving for more with its closing lyric: “Oh no / It’s getting louder…”
The genre of punk constantly dances on the fine line between cliche and anti-modernity. With an increasing preference for shinier, more polished production, very few manage to preserve the same kind of thrash and punchiness Sun Room presents in OUTTA THEIR MINDS. While there’s an undoubtedly touch of California sun in their bright melodies and nonchalant executions, OUTTA THEIR MINDS still has a layer of grimes and grunge furnish that does not glamorize but naturalize.
Clearly Sun Room has their mind set on going places, it’s just a matter of what’s next.
