Voluminous of discography with an unflagging underground spirit, Sunburned Hand of the Man has returned with Nimbus, releasing April 12 on vinyl (black or “big blue”), compact disc, and digital with cover art by Tony Oursler through Three Lobed Recordings. It’s a wide-ranging set packed tight but flowing loose with psychedelic groove jams, post-Beat poetic recitations, and even a delightful folky strummer courtesy of returning member Phil Franklin. Loaded with guitars and rhythm and synths and even mellotron, the album is a fine extension of the Sunburned ethos.
Sunburned Hand of the Man reared to life in mid-’90s Boston, growing out of the deep underground psych-art-scuzz outfit Shit Spangled Banner, but the contracting and expanding troop really hit their grooving-jamming-racket stride in the decade following as part of the burgeoning New Weird America movement (their 2004 CD No Magic Man was released by Bastet, a label associated with Arthur magazine).
Once wildly prolific, with roughly 20 releases coming out in limited editions (mostly CDrs and a few cassettes) in 2008 alone, Sunburned’s output has slowed in recent years, but they’ve still managed to rip multiple CDrs every year in this century so far, some archival, others freshly recorded. Regarding vinyl, Nimbus is a follow-up to Pick a Day to Die, issued in 2021, also by Three Lobed Recordings.
Fluidity of lineup with a solid core is something of a Sunburned constant. Nimbus was recorded last year with Michael Josef K, Matt Krefting, and original member Phil Franklin returning to the fold and fortifying a core of founders John Moloney and Rob Thomas. The other players include Conrad Capistran, Gary War, Shannon Ketch, Wednesday Knudsen, Adam Langellotti, Jeremy Pisani, Taylor Richardson, Ron Schneiderman, and Sarah Gibbons, who’s credited here as making her proper recorded debut with Sunburned.
Nimbus also features poetry from Peter Gizzi and Krefting, additions that reinforce Sunburned’s stature as movement blenders. Spawned from the convulsions of curious, boundary stretching punks (Shit Spangled Banner), the group has long pursued an inclusionary approach, embracing the mind expanding gush of the hippie era with punk’s no-bullshit toughness and an unbending allegiance to the u-ground.
Engaging with poetics integrates the beat impulse into the scheme. This is really nothing new for the group, as Sunburned backed poet Ira Cohen in the early 2000s (they are captured together on the ’07 DVD The Invasion Of Thunderbolt Pagoda, also released by Bastet). Gizzi’s poem titles Nimbus and is heard in its opening track as the synth, mellotron (implying flute), and bells suggest the track was cut in an empty classroom at Black Mountain College in the late ’70s and released by Folkways on a spoken word compilation.
That’s sweet. Gizzi’s other contribution “Consider the Wound,” which begins with a riff on William Carlos Williams (always a good idea), is more tense, as much due to Gizzi’s no-nonsense elocution as Sunburned’s backing, which is focused and unobtrusive. Overall, it sounds like it could’ve been cut in the ’80s at St. Mark’s in NYC.
Krefting’s reading in the vinyl’s closer “Hilltop Garden Lament” is more confrontational, reminiscent of the post-beat street poets that flourished in the ’80s underground, radiating a Black Sparrow Press vibe and bringing to mind the poetry albums that New Alliance Records issued late in that decade (also the Widowspeak label’s Our Fathers Who Aren’t in Heaven 2LP).
The catchy freak folk of “Ishkabibble Magoo” lends appealing breadth to Nimbus, but there’s still a literary connection, as least for this writer, as Ishkabibble is the name of a character in Victor LaValle’s excellent novel The Ecstatic (Magoo reminds me of Georgia Hubley’s father). “Lily Thin” is also quite songlike, but with more of a rock backbone and killer guest organ by P.G. Six (Pat Gubler); it’s something of a dual cover, tackling Sun City Girls’ “Cruel & Thin,” a song that was already an adaptation of “Lili Twili” by the Moroccan singer-actor Younes Megri.
“Nimbus” flows nicely into the funky and spacy “The Lollygagger,” a cut that should’ve stretched out for a while. It’s oozes a bit of a Krautrock feel, which is unsurprising on a record with a song titled “Brainticket.” The hardest driving (but still quite psych, with its burning acid guitar) rock moment on the vinyl is “Walker Talker,” and also the boldest groove (it fades out, inspiring hopes that an unedited cut will eventually see release)
There are three non-vinyl bonus cuts available with the purchase of Nimbus in any available format. So everybody wins. All three tracks add value, but “Juice Cruise” sticks out, as it adds saxophone that is yacht appropriate. After well over 100 releases Sunburned Hand of the Man still has some surprises up their collective sleeve.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
