Setting Sun: Be Here When You Get There

Setting Sun are a group that describes themselves via their Facebook page as a sonic folk/electroacoustic pop band. Despite this rather grandiose self-assessment, their latest output, Be Here When You Get There , is not one of sprawling “concept” songs that their genre may suggest. Instead, their fifth studio album since 2002 is filled with tight, mostly acoustic tracks that if anything, never fully develop as they seem they could.

With an average song-length of a little more than three minutes, there is little room for the songs to vary within themselves. Instead, Setting Sun take a more formulaic approach, introducing a strumming pattern, getting in a solid chorus and perhaps one or two verses, then simply moving on without further exploring what could be quality four- or five-minute tracks. The most enjoyable aspect of the record comes with the band’s wide variety of instrumentation, which includes numerous string sections as well as several synthesizer mutations to give some of the tracks the more spaced out feel that adds the “sonic” to the sonic folk.