Reviewsic [ri-vyoo-zik] -noun: Music worth talking about

The premise behind an album is always an interesting story to hear, be it about a musician’s suffocating small town or love that’s come and gone. Texan musician Car Gonzalez, playing under the moniker Sunsets and Hearts, has a story of his own to tell with his upcoming release, Viva Tu Muerte. Based on a series of night terrors that plagued Gonzalez, Viva Tu Muerte depicts the feeling of disturbance that can come when your surrender your mind to itself. “It’s an eerie feeling that I’ve never felt before and I woke up remembering the words my grandma use to tell my brother and I when we little kids. “Vive Tu Muerte” she would say, meaning, “live your death.” (Car Gonzalez)

Following up his free 2009 EP, Despair & Desperation, this next installment from Sunsets and Hearts will be seeing his official online release tomorrow, May 31^st. Two of the six new tracks, “Kill City” and “Black Crowd” have been available for stream or download since earlier this month, giving fans a little taste of what Gonzalez has concocted for this EP.

Comparatively Viva Tu Muerte and Despair & Desperation are in the same vein, both dependent on synth-y fills and dreamily echoing guitars. Gonzalez delivers vocals that are un-tethered to the point of feeling more like a stream of consciousness than a structured song, which works in some instances but clashes in others. A penchant for slightly off key whines is something the indie world has developed over the years and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t own at least one record that makes use of this vocal style. With that said, and the full acknowledgment that sometimes a little whine works, we have to go ahead and say that we were not fans of Sunsets and Hearts.

The entire EP of Despair & Desperation seems to be a jumbled mess of buzzing, bleeping, and bleating, with no real sense of direction or purpose behind it. Experimental or lo-fi are tags easily thrown onto music that people don’t know what else to call, but these two styles can have reason behind them- Despair & Desperation doesn’t. Someparts of this EP reminded us of the confusion that is Bletcum from Blechdom while others felt like an attempt to put a spin on Animal Collective gone wrong. Even in moments that show potential, like “Vera Moon” the musical decision making of Sunsets and Hearts manages to go awry. (Unfortunately very early in the seven minutes that make up the track.) First impressions of Sunsets and Hearts from this EP are not very positive.

Fortunately things seem to be shaping up with this new release. The two tracks that saw an early debut tone down the chaotic over production, starting to take shape as actual songs with actual melodies. We weren’t fans of the flat shout that makes up the chorus to “Kill City” but we did enjoy the organ build and echoing harmonies that backed it up. “Black Cloud” would have been better if the vocals could have tightened up to be less droning, but the clean, simple keyboard that supports the track is a nice pairing with the its spacey guitar.

Now, its entirely possible that these new tracks only seem like such an improvement because of what we’re comparing them to, but we’ll give Sunsets and Hearts the benefit of the doubt and say that the music has really shaped up. Despair & Desperation is up for a free download online with Viva tu Muerte soon to follow; so really, music fans have nothing to lose by going to pick up the EP and deciding on this for themselves. So don’t simply take our word for it- visit Sunsets and Hearts online today, and check out the latest musical offering from Gonzalez.

The man behind Sunsets and Hearts answered a few questions for us via email this month to talk about the upcoming EP, what inspires his music, and what we can look forward to from Sunsets and Hearts in the coming year.

Reviewsic: Can you give us a quick recap of what the band has been up to as of late?

Car Gonzalez: These past 3 months we’ve really just focused on recording, I’m really putting a lot of pressure on myself to get this to sound exactly how I hear it in my head. Also I have a couple of other really great musicians who I consider close friends contributing on the album for a couple of songs.

Reviewsic: If you could book a tour with any 3 bands, past or present, who would they be and why?

Car Gonzalez: Stevie Nicks because I love her, Sonic Youth because we could all learn a thing or two from Thurston Moore, and At the Drive-In because well I’m from Texas and I never had the chance to see them.

Reviewsic: What are your top three musical influences?

Car Gonzalez: They always vary from year to year, month to month but  the people I always go back to our; Bowie, Prince, Curtis and Rickly, that was four so sorry.

Reviewsic: Is there any instrument you don’t play, but wish you did?

Car Gonzalez: Trumpet, Sax

Reviewsic: What are the last three albums or bands you listened to?

Car Gonzalez: A band I’m listening to a lot lately is Naomi Punk, and I just recently discovered To The Happy Few and the influential Gang of Four is always on rotation.

Reviewsic: If you could work with one person in the music industry (musician, label, producer etc), who would it be and why?

Car Gonzalez: Leftist Nautical Antiques because they put out really good music. Feist because she has an amazing voice like no other. For The Mathematics because they should have never disbanded.

Reviewsic: Who was the first band/musician you saw live?

Car Gonzalez : When I was like 9 or 10 my Aunt was close friends with Selena, a popular performer from Corpus Christi where I’m from. She took me and brothers to see her and we also had the chance to meet her after the concert. I just remember her being amazing and a really really nice person….the crazy thing is like 2 years later she ended up being murdered on my birthday which I always thought was strange and sad.

Reviewsic: Who are three of your favorite local bands?

Car Gonzalez: Girls on Jetskis, Winchester and Atomic Superman in no particular order.

Reviewsic: What’s the back-story on how the band came to be what it is today?

Car Gonzalez: Well it actually started after I met Geoff Rickly at one of the Thursday concerts last year. Me and a group of friends had a chance to meet and talk to him. I remember him talking about Common Existence and explaining the meaning behind it and how we all thought it was such a great record. Afterwards he was talking about how music made him feel and how he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. What I remember most was he had such a great understanding on life…and I always knew if I ever met him he would be such a good person.

At the time (2009) I was having one of the worst years of my young life everything that could go wrong was going wrong a long time friend I cared about dearly passed away, the band I was playing with at the time disbanded in the middle of recording our first EP together, and some other really personal stuff was going on behind the scenes that led to all this bad karma. So when I got home from the Thursday concert I immediately started working on “Despair & Desperation” the first album we released under Sunsets and Hearts. Honestly Full Collapse was the reason I started playing music in the first place so it was like meeting a hero…I know that sounds cheesy but it was.

Reviewsic: Tell us about the Vive Tu Muerte - is there a particular concept behind it? What was the process of making the album like?

Car Gonzalez: The album is about a series of dreams I was having and dealing with from January thru February of 2010. I was right in the middle of recording and structuring songs after days of just releasing, Despair & Desperation.

I had made it a point to not have any running theme for the next album because I wanted to start releasing music immediately after this last release. I had some songs that didn’t exactly fit with the sound of Despair & Desperation,but that all came to a halt because what I was experiencing was quickly changing the direction of that.

People call them night terrors or something like that. For those two months I was waking up in the middle of the night shaking and drenched in sweat from these vivid dreams, what I remember I saw and witnessed my own death several times.  It’s an erie feeling that I’ve never felt before and I woke up remembering the words my grandma use to tell my brother and I when we little kids. (Mind you she was a mean old “vieja” from mexico who we would see maybe once every few years she wasn’t to fond of us)  ”vive tu muerte”  she would say, meaning “live your death.

I don’t know where these dreams came from or why those words stuck out as I had never experienced this before. In one of the dreams I was driving over a long industrial bridge when all of a sudden the bridge started shaking and finally collapsed in on itself immediately I was free falling towards the water when I hit I woke up sweating with a serious chest pain.

In another dream I remember I was being stabbed with a machete by an unknown person I couldn’t see who it was. When I woke up I couldn’t breath it was like the air was being pulled out of me. There were a few others I can’t recall but it was always followed by a sudden awakening and different areas of pain, sweat, lack of oxygen…etc.

These were explicitly vivid dreams it felt like I was there, I still remember them like a memory its weird and unexplainable in words. I did some research on dreams of death and it described when a person is letting go of his past (inner demons) and is starting a new… this is what the album is about.

Reviewsic: How would you compare yourself as a musician at the point of this new release as opposed to when you first began?

Car Gonzalez: Making songs comes easier, that and knowing when you’re going down a dead end.

Reviewsic: What are some of your favorite cities to play?

Car Gonzalez: Just playing shows in general is fun doesn’t matter when or where just as long as someone is there to listen.

Reviewsic: What are the best and worst band moments so far in your career?

Car: The strange thing is they usually happen before we release something, like the last album and now this album it’s like theirs a hex on the music.

Reviewsic: What are three words you’d use to describe your music to someone who’s never heard it?

Car Gonzalez: Thrash, and crash….haha no, but its good check it out.

Reviewsic: What are your plans for your music in the next year?

Car Gonzalez: Well we are going to release “Vive Tu Muerte” at the end of May which we are extremely excited about…then I want to start playing some shows sometime in October.

While this is going on we will begin to finish work on what I’m calling a W.A.V.A.M. album, a Word, Art, Video and Music album. It’s going be centered on a short story I’ve written called, “Silver’s Ruin” its about a couple who are experiencing something they can’t control but have been looking for their whole life. I don’t want to give to much away because its’ such a unique story. I like to say it’s a modern gutter punk fantasy fairytale.

There will be Sunsets and Hearts music that goes along specifically with the emotions inside the story. There will also be art that express the moods in the characters and short videos that will explain the theme in a broader sense. I hope to have this done before the end of the year and I can’t give a release date on this just yet.

But before any of this happens we are primarily just focusing on Vive Tu Muerte right now…then everything else will follow.