Danish bedroom musician Sebastian T.W. Kristiansen is the voice, guitar and keyboardist behind this debut, 14-track album on Denmark's always compelling Bad Afro label.
The Bad Afro people stumbled across some demos by young Sebastian, who's reputed to be something of a recluse, put a band underneath him and bankrolled the long-player. It's filed under "bubble gum psych" - which is to say it's somewhere between folk and fuzz while not taking itself too seriously. Lorenzo from Baby Woodrose drummed and produced, so you know it's going to be good.
"In a Certain Way" is the single - on 7" vinyl, no less - and is the poppiest moment on "The Setting Son". Catchy as a cold and more straight-ahead rock-pop than much of the rest of the album.
There's a folky lightness in "All I Want Is You" and "Le Sacre Coeur" that catches a mood. The latter puts me in mind of '80s Australian band The Moffs who've had a bit of turntable time around the I-94 Bar of late. There's more crunch in "I'm Down" than anything The Moffs recorded with Kristiansen's lysergic opening scream and a driving fuzz guitar line.
Some of these tracks are brief soundscapes rather than full-blown songs, with none running to three minutes and a handful ("The Setting Son", "I Wanna Be Your Boy") clocking in at half that. That's not to say something like the spacey "You Better Run Away From Me" doesn't have a beginning, an end and a middle; it's more like The Setting Sons' songs (try saying that three times fast) say what they're all about in a minimum of time and get the hell out of Dodge.
The tendency towards economy is unusual in this genre and a bonus for people with short attention spans or ADHD. For their folky overtones, each of these songs has at least a toe planted in fuzzy rock soil, which should appeal to the rock dogs reading this. The fuzz riffing is more often than not supplanted by prominent keyboard figures and background vocals ("Running Demons", "All I Want Is You") to build an alluring sound.
