In Stores Now: Hit After Hit by Sonny & the Sunsets

Detail of the cover illustration of Galaxy magazine Vol. 16 No. 1by Mel Hunter, October 1960

I'll admit that I have trouble getting mad at "retro" music when it's done well, mostly because I like to see how musical influences get reshaped when passed through different filters. For instance, what happens if you take an album of Sonics-style garage rock and remove all the menace and about half of the energy? What's left? San Francisco's Sonny Smith and his band the Sunsets tried this experiment, and the results are, surprisingly, quite satisfactory. Hit After Hit is garage rock made by musicians sprawled out on old couches - the results are not too far from the Modern Lovers and other post-VU bands, but Sonny & the Sunsets get there without drawing a straight line through Lou Reed.

When you slow garage rock down, the temptation is to add embellishments to make up for the lowered energy level, but Sonny & the Sunsets leave their arrangements fairly bare-bones. As a result, the songs on Hit After Hit have to have pretty compelling melodies. Album opener "She Plays Yo Yo With My Mind" is a little flat (but good for introducing the album's concept), but every other song on the album has at least one nice hook. From the feel-good vibes of "I Wanna Do It" to the muted scorn of "Don't Act Dumb", each of the songs on Hit After Hit has its own appeal, and a few nice production touches don't get in the way (my favorite being the slap echo effect in the chorus of "Teenage Thugs"). And, most interestingly, the album doesn't feel "thin", even though it has a length of under a half hour and includes two instrumentals.

Certain high-profile reviews of Hit After Hit have used the term "low-stakes" to describe the music of Sonny Smith, and I think that's misleading. Making pop music this direct and unadorned takes some real guts - an inferior set of songs would sound terrible presented like this. It's hard to say that I'm excited by this album because excitement isn't really part of the Sonny & the Sunsets equation, but I think I'm as pleased with Hit After Hit as the band must be.

"I Wanna Do It" by Sonny & the Sunsets