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From arena-hopping festival headliners to the local garage band, COVID-19 forced musicians of all stripes to rethink, reorganize, and regroup. Fortunately for Liz Brooks and Paul McCorkle, the core duo behind Bay Area synth-pop project Sunset Lines, by the time the pandemic shuttered venues across the country they were already accustomed to starting over.<\/p>\n
The group\u2019s newest EP, Home Anywhere<\/i>, ruminates on the many changes Sunset Lines have pushed through in recent years, and finds the band closer than ever to what they want to be.<\/p>\n
When Sunset Lines released their 2017 EP, Slippery Slope<\/i>, the band was new. In fact it had come together out of a previous group that had failed to launch. That guitar-driven project was very different from the keyboard-based textures that characterize Sunset Lines. \u201cOur first EP was a reaction to that previous work,\u201d McCorkle says. \u201cTrying to get away from [that style], we started using more synthesizers, making it sound more lush.\u201d<\/p>\n
As pleased as McCorkle and Brooks were with the 2017 EP, they both feel that it didn\u2019t quite capture the vision they had for Sunset Lines. \u201cIt was definitely a learning experience,\u201d Brooks says. \u201cBeing the main songwriters for the first time, we were still kind of figuring out our sound.\u201d McCorkle agrees, calling Slippery Slope<\/i> \u201ckind of primitive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even in normal times, four years can bring a lot of changes. For Sunset Lines, the period between the release of their first record and the start of making Home Anywhere<\/i> marked another reinvention and realignment for the band. \u201cOur bass player [moved] to the East Coast,\u201d Brooks says. \u201cAnd our drummer moved to the suburbs to start a family.\u201d By the summer of 2018 the group was effectively a duo.<\/p>\n
And the shift in the group dynamic affected the process of songwriting. Brooks says that she found herself not having to \u201cwrite for the style of anybody else we were working with.\u201d In practice, that meant \u201cfunkier key changes, and softer sounds that wouldn\u2019t always work for a live band.\u201d<\/p>\n
That experience was a learning process, too. Brooks says that only one song from that initial batch would make the cut as she and McCorkle began work on their second EP. \u201c\u2019Phototaxis\u2019 is the one that really captured our sound,\u201d she says. Once she and partner McCorkle \u2013 who also handles production for Sunset Lines \u2013 developed the new material to a partial stage, they brought in a new rhythm section. Bassist Scott Smit and drummer Ben Manning immersed themselves in the creative work of \u201ctaking the songs from sketches to complete entities,\u201d McCorkle says.<\/p>\n
While Sunset Lines is a synth band \u2013 one launched in part out of a desire to de-emphasize stringed instruments \u2013 there are guitars on Home Anywhere<\/i>. \u201cThere are a lot <\/i>of guitars,\u201d McCorkle admits with a laugh. They\u2019re just layered less prominently in the mix, he says. The Sunset Lines aesthetic is informed by an appreciation of artists as diverse as Stevie Nicks, MGMT and Tame Impala, and bears some similarity to late-period Roxy Music. The group\u2019s sound is built on a foundation of classic \u201970s and \u201980s machines like the Roland Juno-106 and the Solina String Ensemble. McCorkle describes the latter as a \u201cdream synthesizer. It\u2019s fun to run through a bunch of pedals and make weird sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Work progressed on what would become Home Anywhere<\/i>, and the EP was nearly finished in early 2020. \u201cWe had been playing a lot of shows,\u201d Brooks says. \u201cIn March we were probably in our best \u2018pocket\u2019 with our rhythm section.\u201d Sunset Lines had made plans to begin production on its first new music video in April 2020 in Los Angeles. \u201cClearly, that didn\u2019t happen,\u201d Brooks says.<\/p>\n
Instead, Brooks says that she and McCorkle \u201chunkered down and focused on getting the album finished.\u201d They worked remotely with their rhythm section. \u201cCollaborating from far away was a first-time thing for us,\u201d Brooks says. But the loss of live performance as a creative outlet gave rise to something else. \u201cWe started focusing a lot more on the visual art that goes behind our songs,\u201d she says. She and McCorkle initially took a DIY approach, shooting and editing the videos themselves to hone their craft.<\/p>\n
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In October of last year, Sunset Lines reassembled in person for a professional video production, shooting a video for the EP\u2019s opening track, \u201cUnresponsive,\u201d in Los Angeles. That session marked \u201cthe first time that any of us had worked on a music video during COVID,\u201d Brooks says. \u201cIt was a lot of mask-wearing, a lot of temperature-taking.\u201d The experience was a bonding and cathartic one for everyone involved.<\/p>\n
Since that time, Sunset Lines has created more videos, returning to the DIY approach. The most recent video \u2013 featuring an EP track called \u201cSeason of the Witch\u201d (not<\/i> the Donovan classic) \u2013 was shot using only Brooks\u2019 and McCorkle\u2019s cell phones.<\/p>\n
Even songs that had been written before the pandemic bear the marks of the worldwide lockdown. \u201cRead the Whole Room\u201d is based on a riff Brooks composed a decade ago. \u201cOne of its first lyrics is \u201813 days,\u2019\u201d McCorkle points out. \u201cThat\u2019s where we were within COVID at the time. It feels like ages ago now, but at the time 130 days felt like a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along the way, in the period marked by Sunset Lines\u2019 launch, dissolution, hiatus, re-formation and enforced lockdown, something else happened: Brooks and McCorkle fell in love. \u201cIn 2015 we found out that we worked really well together,\u201d Brooks says. And the two soon discovered that they connected romantically as well. The couple was wed at the end of May.<\/p>\n
But changes continue for Sunset Lines. They\u2019re not certain when, where, how or even if the band will play live, Brooks says. She and McCorkle recently moved from San Francisco to Santa Cruz. \u201cThat\u2019s part of the EP\u2019s title: Home Anywhere<\/i>,\u201d she explains. Because of the pandemic, \u201cso many people are no longer tied to their location in the ways that they were before,\u201d she says. \u201cSo whether it\u2019s a dream location or just the people that you surround yourself, many people have made a new home for themselves in the past year in one way or another. And we’re trying to figure out the future, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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