Verma - Sunrunner 2014

Sunrunner seems like a curious name for the third album from Chicago prog/psych ensemble Verma since this is music that seems perfectly suited for late in the evening. The band's loving homage to vintage prog and psychedelic sounds accurate enough that one can imagine a crowd of stoned college students listening to this as they stare at a laser light show at the campus planetarium in 1974, and if there was an album of the last 20 years that really should be accompanied by clouds of colored light, this is it. This is not to sound dismissive; the insistent rhythms, the atmospheric keyboard lines, and the sheets of electric guitar thundering in the distance certainly look to the past, but the fire and imagination behind Verma's music are fresh and compelling, and Sunrunner somehow manages to sound languid and physically powerful at the same time. Verma often drifts off into electronic space, with Whitney Johnson and TJ Tambellini giving the tunes a suitably spacy tone with their keyboards, but bassist Rob Goerke and drummer Zach Corn keep this music rooted like a pulsebeat, and Johnny Caluya's guitar solos add an organic touch that fits the songs well, as do Johnson's vocals, which are often wordless sounds but feel eloquent in the context of this music. Sunrunner is more about atmosphere and sound than songs, but Verma does know how to create beautiful frameworks for their music, from the joyous drift through the spaceways of the title track to the noisy thunder of "Regolith" and the futuristic rock of "The Traveller" (well, it would have sounded futuristic at that planetarium show). As electric music for the mind and body goes, Verma is creating a rich, satisfying catalog of work, and Sunrunner is a trippy, fully formed-triumph. AMG.

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