Sundays, the debut album from Oakland-based artist Tanukichan (the stage name of Hannah van Loon), begins with a blast of heavily distorted, slow-moving synth noise. And for a glorious 20 seconds, I thought to myself “Oh, maybe this won’t just be an album of dreamy indie pop that the title and cover art of Tanukichan lazily lounging across the hood of a car implies.” But after 20 seconds that synth distortion resolves into the quiet, mid-tempo dream pop of opening song “Lazy Love”. At least the song is punctuated at points with bursts of chugging, distorted guitar, giving the song a harder, shoegaze edge that makes it an engaging listen.
The bulk of Sundays, however, is indeed dreamy, languid indie pop. That isn’t a bad thing, per se, as Tanukichan is decent at dreamy, languid indie pop. But her songs don’t have a lot of, well, pop. There’s a lot of consistent mood here without a lot of memorable songwriting. Second track “The Best” doubles the vocal melody with a fuzzy guitar, which is neat but it’s the only interesting thing about the song. Third and fourth tracks “Like the Sun” and “Bitter Medicine” don’t even have that. The former has a simple guitar riff to slightly boost its pedestrian vocals, while the latter uses cleaner guitar tones, but both maintain a similar mid-tempo pace and too easily drift into background music for the listener.
Van Loon finally regains a bit of her edge with the hip-hop inspired album centerpiece “Hunned Bandz”. A beat that’s slightly funky backs up full-on fuzz bass and her cooing vocals finally click in here as a sparkly contrast to the heavily distorted instruments. It’s the album’s most distinctive sounding song. Following that, the sprightly “Natural” brightens up the record with a faster speed and cheery synths and guitars in the bridge, providing another good contrast with the more standard fuzz guitars in the bulk of the song.
After this brief break, the album slides back into more typical dream pop. “The Blue Sky” benefits from clear vocals and a strong melody. It also floats on a bed of synth chords and clean guitar accents for a full 80 seconds before the drums enter. “Sundays” is relaxed and gentle and captures the laid-back feeling of a lazy Sunday really well. It’s the most effective of the album’s numerous dream pop songs, with drifting synths, simple guitars, and a catchy vocal melody.
The album wraps up with the upbeat “Perfect” and the low-key “This Time”. “Perfect” has bright guitars and vocals throughout, edging up against power pop. It’s still missing a big hook, though, and the tinny synth drums, which are present but aren’t an issue for the bulk of the album, put a real dampener on this song’s energy. “This Time” is yet another drifty, hazy track, but this one doesn’t have anything particularly distinct about it. When the most interesting part of a three-minute long song is the minute-long slow fadeout of synth chords, it’s not a great effort.
I wanted to like Sundays more than I did. When Tanukichan highlights the contrasts between her affection for distortion and her high-pitched, clear vocals, her songs are much more effective. But that only happens occasionally. “Sundays” is a great example of how her laid-back indie pop can work when she really leans into it. For most of the album, though, Tanukichan seems stuck between really relaxed and more pop-oriented, without quite finding a balance to make her songs compelling.