Sonny & the Sunsets Antenna to the Afterworld

The spaced-themed concept album has always been considered something of a novelty, a transitional phase when artists are compelled to dramatize more practical stories placed in settings that are only imagined as existing in the unknown. Minding the larger-than-life grandee of Ziggy Stardust, creating such a far-flung journey can take two of the following approaches: either exploring interstellar drones with a seriousness that intersects with the isolation of space, or employing rock rebellion into trite plots with the makings of a stage musical. It’s a teetering balancing act that has repeated itself for almost half a century.

But if there was someone willing to refresh the genre, then it had to be Sonny Smith. The Bay Area-based musician/playwright has taken his projects with the Sunsets in numerous directions that range from retrofitted garage rock to love-weary country, yet all of them embody an effortless, everyman stance. His breezy, unforced guitar playing can come across as listless on occasion, which can both a blessing and a curse, since the arrangements err on the primitive side, a quality that especially haunts the most prolific of writers.

Judging on the concept alone, Antenna to the Afterworld can be considered his most ambitious by default. A series of grief-stricken losses has taken Smith to reflect on the idea of death as a transitory phase that goes beyond the physical stage, but turns to gallows humor to buffer a heavy streak of mourning. It gives an added dimension to the crunchy jangle fuzz of Palmreader, in which he proclaims himself as fearless against the odds that lay before him. He’s a searcher of souls in the staggering vitality of Path of Orbit, relishing a spiritual reunion with an ardent communal chant that emulates the wide-grinned splendor of Thundercat Newman’s unforgettable Something in the Air.

Needless to say, such profound themes aren’t entirely prevalent to the premise of Antenna – this is, after all, a series of vignettes that are told through the point of view of a space being visiting Earth. It almost becomes something of an afterthought, a cheap narrative device that’s set-up early with the sole purpose of justifying brilliant closer Green Blood. Blood is just that good of a song – it bounces a conversation back and forth over a sustained chord progression, detailing a human/cyborg love triangle that’s as bizarre as it is endearing. But to get to it, it stumbles upon a few hooky, compressed tracks without adding much of a story – Void relishes on its lunacy with a bevy of keyboard strokes that bounce off the walls over a surf rock twang, while Primitive unabashedly bores a new wave fusion that, to its credit, intriguingly finds a way of creating a sort of bastardized Robert Palmer/Dwight Twilley mashup. 

Afterworld has the earmarks of a classic pop record through and through, and expands on Smith’s peculiarities with an odd array of synth textures that send up the days of sci-fi schlock. It’s screwy but smarter than it appears, achieved with a human element implemented within its core that almost makes you forget about its alien characters. But while it undoubtedly holds some of the strongest songs of his career, it doesn’t entirely fulfill the promise of a conceptual framework; it’s no surprise that Smith’s strange foibles encumber the possibility of achieving this, and only manages to fulfill its vision on a perfunctory level. Which shouldn’t be a surprise: for Smith, songwriting will always be a weird game. And that always comes first.