AAA

by HYUKOH & Sunset Rollercoaster

Someone pitched this album to me as ethereal and gauzy, a delicate web needing multiple listens in different contexts to unpack. After the first listen, I was shocked. AAA is not really any of those things.

It is, instead, an incredible pop/rock record that conjures familiar elements from Western tradition (psychedelia, garage, surf, smooth rock, new wave, and so much more). It ignites those influences with joyous abandon, then gathers friends and family around the burning remains to sing new songs to new gods about a new and better world. Everyone laughs and sings all night long and in the early morning hours as the new sun rises above the still warm embers and sleeping bodies huddled close, this album is what remains, like the dew hung close to the morning grass. An incredible and joyous thing to behold.

If music like this can be made and loved 2024, maybe there is hope for humanity.