Reprise / Wea
2006
Ganging Up On The Sun
About This Album
Guster has quietly become a very good pop band. And something more. Over the past ten-plus years they've been slowly honing their craft, building their fan base and making records that are unprepossessing but more and more compelling. Ganging Up on the Sun just might be their best yet. It certainly is their richest sounding record: the guitars are perfectly layered; the vocals warm and inviting, with sun-kissed harmonies on nearly every track; the songs filled with bubbling keyboards, twanging banjos, and all kinds of sonic embellishment. The group, who produced much of the album themselves, have taken all kinds of care with the sound of the record. Each track sounds handcrafted and labored over, yet retains a loose and mellow feel. That's not an easy trick to pull off, and they manage it without breaking a sweat. Of course, a lovely sound only gets your foot in the door. To get all the way in, you have to have some memorable and hummable songs, and Ganging Up on the Sun has a boatload of them. There are mellow strum-and-singalongs like the country-flavored "The Captain" and melancholy ballads like "Dear Valentine," along with hard-rocking tunes both cynical and angry ("The Beginning of the End") and just cynical ("The New Underground").
Track List (try tracks 1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10)

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