As "Mosquito", the first track on Sun's I'll Be the Same kicks off, I get an instant shot of '90s Thrill Jockey nostalgia. But this is the "Pop Project" of avant-drone genius, sine-wave prophet, guitar-not-guitar god oren ambarchi, and I have to admit, this stuff has a few extra layers of sonic commitment to it. I don't really remember what the Sea & Cake sounded like, I just remember what they sounded like to me then: what "Mosquito" sounds like now. I'd be willing to bet Sun bring with them some advances in production nuance. Percussive ideas especially, keep this song from feeling stiff. Whereas the metronomic slap/strum on "Help Yourself" is resolutely a backbone, a grounding force for a more abstract bit of bliss-out that summons Jim O'Rourke's Halfway to a Threeway re-made by a suddenly capable Animal Collective with Robert Wyatt's voice guesting on a sunbeam...

Now I'm getting carried away, but the same voice(s?) that just manages to work on "Mosquito" is genuinely transporting on "Help Yourself", even if the build-up in woozy harmony-land takes up more time than the real song we eventually get to. But the record as a whole is caught somewhere between unfussy, familiar pleasures and pleasures deflected or withheld. And now I'm back to those flashbacks, when post-rock felt like more of a philosophy of life than an aesthetic...

Sun--Mosquito
Sun--Help Yourself