Peering out from a jet-black square, a pair of watery blue eyes stare into the distance, brimming with a haunting blend of fear, despondency, and calmness. Dark and moody, it’s a fitting cover for an album entitled Attic, the kaleidoscopic new offering from experimental DIY band Sunnets. The Australian duo, Sasha Hart and Sebastian Callum, have already shared two EPs and three LPs since making their bold debut last January. Despite their prolific pace, each release sees the band evolving and exploring rather than repeating as they embrace the freedom to play with different genres. From the stripped-back acoustics of Eucalyptus to La Ooze’s electro-pop-tinged groove, Attic offers a psychy post-punk addition to their rapidly growing discography.
“What Is This Place” lures us into the project with ominous spoken word underscored by short, sporadic beats mimicking a panicked heartbeat. “Make sure you look both ways before crossing over,” Sasha Hart whispers, her eerie tone alluding to something perhaps more supernatural than crossing the street. By the end of the track, Hart’s voice has built to a commanding finish, tightening its grip around us as we delve further into the album and all its gritty, ghostly glory.
In a swift change of mood, “Tenderness” is propelled by a pulsing bassline as Hart demands us to “try a little tenderness,” creating a sound both playful and sharp, while “My Dove” feels like a subverted love song. Its lyrics are imbued with sentiments of betrayal and suffocation—“my only loved one, you put a hex upon my heart”—but Hart’s voice carries an air of nonchalance, elevated by the casual groove of the track’s production. This encourages us to listen more consciously, deciding for ourselves whether to interpret the overall tone of “My Dove” as one of apathy or acceptance, or maybe a more ambiguous fusion of the two.
At the other end of the musical spectrum, “Life and Love Were New” wouldn’t be out of place in a supernatural horror film soundtrack as Hart reports hearing a voice “coming from inside the house.” At just over one minute, it is short and anything but sweet: warped background vocals coil around uneasy spoken word, tethered by a slow, thudding beat drawing a powerful amount of tension out of such a brief track. And yet, the variety of genres and sounds explored throughout Attic feels cohesive and intentional thanks to Sunnets’ flair for hypnotic spoken word and atmospheric instrumentation across the album.
This is evident in “Blue Gum Tree and a Bucket of Shells,” which ramps up the energy in true post-punk fashion with punchy vocals layered over jagged synths in a high-energy ode to Hart and Callum’s homeland: “this isn’t New York / it’s a blue gum tree and a bucket of shells.” “Attic Book” channels similar tendencies, laden with angsty percussion, while the calmer closing track “Svalbard” abruptly brings us back down to earth. Named after the world’s northernmost inhabited archipelago, “Svalbard” presents an ambient soundscape evocative of such a rugged, remote environment, halfway across the world from Sunnets’ home in Sydney. It’s an entirely instrumental track, and much sparser than the rest of the project—having traversed striking vocals and production ranging from dark to danceable, “Svalbard” serves as a more muted epilogue for listeners to drift through on their way out of Sunnets’ Attic, allowing us to reflect on just how far we’ve travelled with them.
In many ways, Sunnets’ latest offering is reminiscent of stumbling around an old attic, a purposeful, often elusive space that can incite both comfort and fear. You never quite know what you’ll uncover next—swirling guitar melodies, affronting spoken word, or perhaps a subtle, ghoulish wail. Still, every discovery feels deliberate as Attic pieces together an expansive emotional spectrum from fear to feistiness, delivered by a band whose willingness to experiment leads them to the heart of the human psyche.
