Sucre's A Minor Bird hits stores April 12.
Sucre is a band on the precipice of blowing up the indie pop music scene, and their new record, A Minor Bird, is a match-striker of a debut album.
The “superband” of sorts is made up of Stacy DuPree, vocalist of Eisley; Darren King, drummer of MuteMath, who is also married to DuPree; and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Larson.
That’s a lot of talent. And it hasn’t gone unnoticed. The trio have garnered well-deserved internet buzz from MTV, Spinner.com, and Diana Agron of “Glee” gave them a shout out.
The important thing is that people are actually recognizing this project is special. A Minor Bird is one of those albums you simply can’t get a complete grasp of with one listen. It will take two or three listens before the magnitude of what you’re listening to actually seeps in. That’s because there’s just so much to listen for and admire.
On the first listen you may be overwhelmed with how different it is from anything you’ve ever heard. And that’s especially true if you are listening from the perspective as a fan of DuPree’s work in Eisley. She’s really come out of her comfort zone and taken this opportunity to experiment with every aspect of her sound, from her phrasing to her timing. But that’s not to say this album plays too weird, because it’s still pop. The first two tracks, “Hiding Out” and “When We Were Young,” might be more conventional pop songs and are an appropriate intro to the album.
By the second listen or so you’ll get around to admiring DuPree’s vocals and lyrics, which are as angelic as always, showcasing her beautiful, airy-head voice on this album.
Every song on A Minor Bird is about love in some way. That could be love gone good, as in my favorite song off the album, “Chemical Reaction,” where she sings “I hold your name up to the sky, so high/Good God child, have you noticed/The ceiling never closes?/I hope you feel so safe with me/It could last for our lives.”
Or love gone bad, like in “Say Something” with the seething lyrics “Hit where it hurts/Is this what I deserve/A mouthful of dirt?/Well I curse the very day that we met/So now you’ll go and lay in the bed that you made.”
The third listen through you’ll be in awe of the lush instrumentation and arrangements. The symphonic texture to DuPree’s vocals is strong enough and beautiful enough to stand alone, but not ostentatious. Just listen to the strings and you can almost feel what Larson’s emotions were while playing his violin, or viola, or harp – he plays it all. And he painstakingly layers those tracks to create romance and atmosphere. Nowhere is that more purposeful than in the Parisian sounding “No Return.” Close your eyes while listening to the track and you’ll be transported to the streets of France. Larson sounds like the kind of musician who really pours himself into his craft and doesn’t settle for a mediocre sound.
That could describe all three of them, which brings me to King. I’ll admit I have never really been a MuteMath fan, so I didn’t know what to expect of him on this album.
I now know just how incredibly talented a percussionist he is.
As soon as King drops the mallets on the drums the song suddenly has a grand body to it, but he’s not careless. His beats are precise and deliberate, so they mesh wonderfully with DuPree’s vocals and orchestral arrangements. Percussion can most be appreciated in the rhythm of the song “Stampede,” where King’s beat delivery creates the illusion of, well, a stampede. But he’s also delicate when he needs to be, as on “Light Up,” providing a softer percussion for the more acoustic-sounding song.
I could totally see a crowd getting down to those beats, and if the trio can duplicate even a fragment of their sound during a live performance, you will be left in awe.
Sucre is in the middle of a short tour to promote the release of A Minor Bird, and will be playing April 22 at Fitzgerald’s in Houston. Tickets can be purchased here.