It’s a tricky art to craft challenging music that deeply rewards the listener’s attention and patience. It’s even rarer for such intellectually stimulating music to almost force you to sing and move along to it. Such is the beauty in the exception for Montreal art rock act Suuns (pronounced “soons”) and their latest album Felt. The name (and arresting album art) gets to why this collection is as successful at its aims as it is. Suuns play the type of psychedelic, almost robotic new wave-ish Krautrock that can feel a bit stale and minimalist when you don’t pay full attention (or listen at low volumes). “Minimalist” is often a slight that loosely translates to boring, but Felt‘s reveals a band who revels in playing around in the margins – to be frank, there’s a shit-ton of nuance that gleefully reveals itself after multiple listens. It’s surprisingly mesmerizing, even if it can come across somewhat bizarre initially.
However, once you begin to feel the music, you’re absolutely hooked. Unlike a lot of similarly-minded acts who don’t seem to care about listener engagement, Felt finds the act grabbing the listener with a wide array of styles and sounds and guides them along a wild and entertaining journey. Suuns are one of those odd bands that sound like a rock band playing electronic music (or vice versa, really). It often sounds like demented pop music, and the soul of the stadium psych of acts like Tame Impala can certainly be found within the record. Vocalist Ben Shemie’s distant yet enchanting delivery augments some sneakily addictive hooks as well.
All of this comes with a caveat that Felt is certainly (and clearly, purposefully) strange, but there are a number of fantastic arrangements that most certainly could be beats for club killers (“Peace and Love” and “Materials” definitely). There are also a number of truly winning hooks as well, but it’s a testament to Suuns’ craft that those more easy-going aspects aren’t features. They merely act as olive branches to their unique brand of electronic art rock, and Felt is a wonderful and weird world to spend some time in.
