Song of the Day: Morgan Delt - Some Sunsick Day

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, comes from Californian psychedelic artist Morgan Delt. "Some Sunsick Day" is the epic closer from his Sub Pop debut, Phase Zero, out now.

Morgan Delt - Some Sunsick Day (MP3)For his welcome to Sub Pop's roster, Morgan Delt didn't name his album Phase Zero for nothing. The record truly feels like a new beginning of sorts, though it's far from his first material. In his early recordings for Trouble in Mind, Morgan Delt channeled 60s and 70s west coast psychedelia with the best of them. His grainy, acid-tinged visions felt like Ariel Pink without the pantomime, or perhaps Thee Oh Sees without the flagrant violence. Delt's highly approachable trips made for endlessly repeatable drops of nostalgia, set against a modern landscape of asphalt and squelching frequencies. But with Phase Zero, all of that changes. Delt's new album sets higher stakes on a higher budget, fleshing out production and letting the rainbow horizons really shimmer and shake. It's his most complete exhibition yet, and it inspires a very exciting notion for where Delt is headed next.

While the lazy paranoia of "I Don't Want To See What's Happening Outside" or the floating distrust of "System of 1000 Lies" might be a more telling introduction to the exploratory nature of Delt's sound, "Some Sunsick Day" showcases Delt's songwriting chops like nothing else on the record. Closing out an album full of questioning and wandering the wilderness, it serves as a final, well-rounded punch of bright, blinding light from far beyond the horizon. It's as if Delt closes his record with one clear picture of the warmth and inner peace he's been looking for on the nine songs prior. A circling three-bar hook drives forward in kaleidoscope fashion, as building toms and triumphant synthesizers move towards a burning vision of light beyond human comprehension. It's songs like this that convince you Morgan Delt has seen something you definitely want a part of, and Phase Zero is the type of record where he offers to be your guide.

Grab "Some Sunsick Day" above and check out the psychedelic ride of a video below. Also, make sure to listen to the rest of Morgan Delt's Phase Zero, out now on Sub Pop. Check out all future live dates here and for more on Morgan Delt on his Facebook page. For now, you can get dizzy with the official video for "Some Sunsick Day":