5 out of 5

Produced by: John Goodmanson

Label: Warner Bros.

Working backwards, it’s clearer now why The Sun’s full length debut, Blame It On the Youth, had something of a lukewarm critical reception: it doesn’t add anything to the formula that ‘Did Your Mother Tell You?’ doesn’t also do, with the latter – obviously the focus of this review – getting it done in half the tracks, half the runtime, and with more stylistic variations to boot.  The name of the game is still a punk-infused take on hand-clapping pop – i.e. hard-edged garage pop – where that infusement goes beyond any Hives or Vines intensity to an unbelievable turn-it-up-to-11 level.  Witness the lung shredding blitz of opener My Girlfriend’s Best Friend, or see if your head doesn’t explode as the Grease-esque head-bob of Sandy takes a speedball and explodes through the roof on a wave of vocal antics and power durmming.  Mixed in with this, though, are stomach butterflies, skillful moments of pop beauty – the glittering Valentine, for example – or Cracker-esque folk segues, a la closer Song For Your Daughter…  This range and impact are another retrospective boon of the EP over album: Did Your Mother can hit as hard and fast as it wants and you get exhausted right about when the disc wraps down; the full length has to play it comparatively cool for longer.  And yeah, also noted that Valentine is one of the group’s best tracks and it carried over to Blame, along with another track from this EP – Justice.  I still love their debut, but again, going back to this release, I get how it could be a letdown.  Or maybe a more direct way to say it is that it could only ever be a letdown, since this EP is pretty damn perfect.