Song of the Day: A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Crushin'

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Morning Show with John Richards, is “Crushin'” by A Sunny Day in Glasgow from the 2014 album Sea When Absent on Lefse.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Crushin' (MP3)

Comprised of six members operating in three cities (Sydney, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia), A Sunny Day in Glasgow might not have the most efficient creative process, but the fragmented nature of the group is undoubtedly crucial to the band's ethereal, seamlessly cut-and-pasted music. First active in Philadelphia in the mid-2000s, the group's knack for patching together melodic and gauzy shoegaze-indebted tunes from studio stems won them online buzz for 2007's Scribble Mural Comic Journal and 2009's Ashes Grammar. By 2010, the band had splintered into different parts of the world and onto other projects, slowing progress down and requiring a few lineup changes. Along with producer Jeff Zeigler, the band's fourth album was gradually recorded by the current lineup of Josh Meakim, Annie Fredrickson, Jen Goma, Ryan Newmyer, Adam Herndon, and de facto leader Ben Daniels; upon its release, the album, Sea When Absent, won critical praise and renewed interest in the seemingly dormant band. The chilled-out "Crushin'" arrives after two joyous, upbeat tracks, but as Goma and Fredrickson's half-buried vocals flow in and out of floating keyboards and a charmingly messy guitar solo from Daniels, "Crushin'" reveals itself to be something greater than its loosely-constructed parts: five minutes of difficult-to-decipher but clearly resonant bliss.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow just finished a summer tour of the United States, but if they go back out on tour behind Sea When Absent or release some new music, those announcements will be on their website and Facebook. Below, watch the lyric video for the Sea When Absent track "In Love With Useless".