‘Sunrise’ is an appropriate way to end what has been a rather bright year for Indigo Velvet, rounding off months of successful touring with a clear, bouncy and melodic single which captures the band’s sunshine spirit.
Beginning with trademark shimmery guitar licks and a rolling, syncopated rhythm which demands cheerful foot-tapping, Darren Barclay’s voice enters with a buttery mellowness that graduates to something more powerful and insistent as the song progresses.
‘Sunrise’ is about adultery from the perspective of the cheated party; however the song isn’t just a clichéd anthem of self-pity and instead evokes its subject’s theme of confusion and bittersweet realisation by contrasting the experience of being “frozen and cold”, shut out from the truth, with a warm pop exuberance which becomes a form of empowerment for the disenchanted party.
As the song builds from its initial percussive flourishes and into a breakdown complete with thrashing guitars and increasingly pointed vocal gymnastics, the tropical sound acquires a rockier edge which appropriately fits the sense of pulling through emotional collapse and into a kind of defiance, as with the repeated refrain, “hello / hell no / it’s not like we are identical”.
While Indigo Velvet’s previous singles are upbeat slices of pop dealing with dating and city life with a casually simple charm, ‘Sunrise’ proves that the band are capable of applying their catchy formula to explore darker, more complex lyrical themes.
Words: Maria Sledmere
Rave Child 