If listening to
Scribble Mural Comic Journal could be likened to watching a horror flick made in the 1950s,
Ben Daniels would be a skinny teenage genius in a baggy lab coat, his twin sisters Lauren and Robin would be his eerie assistants clad in go-go boots, and the album itself would be his robot bride. In other words,
A Sunny Day in Glasgow's debut is ambitious to the point of becoming monstrous; it strides right past the pop-oriented shoegaze material of the preceding EP and dives right into the sometimes miry tangle of
Ben's auditory imagination. Lauren and Robin's tightly wound vocals are gorgeously incomprehensible, the guitars are acidic and knotted, the drums sound like they were recorded at the bottom of an abandoned mineshaft, and the whole thing comes off like a hot, blurry night at the bar. It's the kind of album that demands headphones. The most memorable moments on
Scribble Mural are those that skillfully toe the line between shoegazey pop and avant-garde noise. "A Mundane Call to Jack Parsons" is spot-on with its
Byrds-esque harpsichords and urgent drums, not to mention the fact that Lauren and Robin's vocals are given room to emerge through all that noise. "C'mon" opens with structured, springy guitars, only to lavishly implode into a mass of distortion and wails. "Our Change into Rain Is No Change at All" does the reverse, building ethereal pop out of seemingly chaotic guitars, tambourines, and synths.
Scribble Mural takes
Sunny Day's debut EP and splatters it, Jackson Pollock-style, against a wall. But for all the contortion and deconstruction going on here,
Scribble Mural maintains the slightly disturbing and oddly uplifting vibe that made
Sunny Day's teaser EP memorable. ~ Margaret Reges