New Day with New Possibilities, the latest ‘country’ record by Sonny & the Sunsets, is clearly a companion piece to the cult effort Longtime Companion, the laid back country record which marked the beginning of the Sunsets as an explorative project and not just locked into one sound. It’s an album that sounds like it’s part of a genre that should have happened: a sixties teen country music that merged with sixties pop. It’s out July 30th on Rocks In Your Head Records.
New Day joins with a kind of Michael Hurley home grown sound but sometimes leaning into baroque strings sound as on “Driftin’” and “The Lonely Men.”
Sonny describes: “It was before Covid, I had this big free empty studio in the hills, I was supposed to be painting, that was my initial plan, and I just began making songs on guitar, songs about being alone, songs about failed men, some dark tales of longing. I was reading some old western paperbacks, and I would go on these walks in the hills, come inside and write these kind of lonesome country songs. And that was it.”
Today Glide is excited to premiere the official video for “Palmreade,” a clear standout on the new album. Filmed during Covid with plent of mask-wearking, the video accompanies this simply country-folk number oozing with twangy pedal steel and laid back vocals that bring to mind the cosmic country sounds of the 70s albeit with a touch of acoustic intimacy. The band layers in a basic beat to kick up the tempo and Sonny sings in a manner that feels both content and reflective as he recounts seeing a palmreader.
Sonny describes the inspiration behind the song:
“I saw a palmreader once and she said I’d be in a car crash when I turned 27. But I was already 31. But besides that, I do believe in palmreaders. I believe they can read our stories by looking at our hands. To think we walk around this earth with the future written on our palms. We should all be palmreading each other, all the time, maybe it should be taught like math and science, just from the get go. Also, Josiah did a good job directing this one.”
WATCH:
Photo credit: Sarah Moore
