On The Verge

Sleepy Sun

San Francisco, Calif.
Jefferson Airplane Meets Eddie Vedder and Björk
www.sleepysun.net

Sleepy Sun snuck onto the San Francisco psych scene last fall with the release of its debut Embrace. The band has been blowing heads since, stealing club and indie rock fest crowds with a big, yet sparse sound: heavy grooves dug by deep bass and rattlesnake drums, woven through with two lead guitars’ sinewy wailing—and lit afire by the intense dual vocal interplay between emotive howler Bret Constantino and impish yowler Rachel Williams. Think Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin and Grace Slick—if they were Eddie Vedder and Björk. The band’s core—Constantino, guitarists Matt Holliman and Evan Reiss, bassist Jack Allen, and drummer Brian Tice—first coalesced as the UC Santa Cruz band, Mania. Williams, a solo artist and L.A. transplant, dismissed the group at first as a mere bar blues band. “A year or two went by and we both played the same local music festival, and their sound had—not completely changed, but become mystical,” she says. “It was amazing. And I remember turning to everyone around me like, what the fuck? Is this Mania?” Constantino adds, “That was our first show [as] Sleepy Sun.” And Williams continues, “‘Yeah,’ [I thought] ‘I just gotta be in this band somehow.’”