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**A Sunny Day In Glasgow - Sea When Absent**
★★★★☆

There's something beautifully perverse about a band called A Sunny Day In Glasgow emerging from the grey industrial sprawl of Philadelphia, but then again, Ben Daniels has never been one for conventional logic. After years of crafting increasingly ambitious dream-pop symphonies with his rotating collective of collaborators, Daniels delivered what many consider his magnum opus in 2014's "Sea When Absent" – a sprawling, oceanic meditation on memory, distance, and the spaces between what we remember and what actually happened.

The album arrived at a curious juncture in the band's evolution. Following 2010's critically acclaimed "Autumn, Again", Daniels found himself geographically scattered from his core collaborators, with sisters Jen and Annie Fredette relocated to Australia. Rather than viewing this displacement as an obstacle, he embraced it as the album's central metaphor. "Sea When Absent" became a literal and figurative exploration of absence – the vast oceanic distances separating the band members, but also the gaps in memory, the phantom limbs of relationships, and the way nostalgia distorts our emotional geography.

Musically, the album represents the apotheosis of A Sunny Day In Glasgow's maximalist tendencies. Where earlier releases flirted with shoegaze and indie pop conventions, "Sea When Absent" abandons all pretense of restraint. This is dream-pop as orchestral suite, with Daniels layering gossamer vocals, treated guitars, and field recordings into dense, immersive soundscapes that seem to breathe and shift like living organisms. The influence of My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins remains audible, but filtered through a distinctly American sensibility that owes as much to Brian Wilson's studio experiments as it does to Kevin Shields' wall of sound.

The album's opening salvo immediately establishes its ambitious scope. "Bye Bye, Big Ocean (The End)" functions as both overture and epilogue, its title's parenthetical suggesting we're entering a story already in progress, or perhaps one that exists outside linear time entirely. The track builds from whispered vocals and ambient washes into a glorious cacophony of treated guitars and wordless harmonies, setting the template for the 70-minute journey ahead.

"In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry In The Tradition Of Passing)" stands as the album's most immediate triumph, marrying the band's penchant for verbose titles to their most direct songwriting. Beneath the layers of reverb and delay lies a genuinely affecting pop song, with the Fredette sisters' vocals floating like sirens through Daniels' carefully constructed sonic fog. It's the rare moment where A Sunny Day In Glasgow's experimental impulses serve rather than obscure their melodic gifts.

Equally compelling is "The Things They Do To Me (These Thoughts Of You)", which finds the band at their most vulnerable. The track's central vocal melody, half-buried in the mix like a half-remembered dream, captures the album's preoccupation with emotional archaeology – the way certain songs or sounds can excavate feelings we thought we'd buried. The interplay between Annie Fredette's ethereal lead vocal and the swirling instrumental arrangement creates a sense of beautiful melancholy that lingers long after the track fades.

The album's centerpiece, "MTLOV (Minor Keys And Drugs)", pushes the band's sound into genuinely experimental territory. At nearly eight minutes, it's less song than sonic sculpture, with field recordings of ocean waves and distant conversations weaving through layers of processed guitars and wordless vocals. It shouldn't work – it's indulgent, occasionally frustrating, and demands patience from listeners – but in context, it feels essential, a necessary pause that allows the album's themes to fully resonate.

"Sea When Absent" arrived to widespread critical acclaim but limited commercial impact, a fate that seems almost inevitable for music this uncompromisingly personal and experimental. In the years since its release, however, its reputation has only grown. Younger dream-pop acts routinely cite it as an influence, and its approach to using geographical distance as creative catalyst has proven prescient in an era of remote collaboration and digital displacement.

The album stands as A Sunny Day In Glasgow's most complete artistic statement – a work that transforms the band's natural tendency toward excess into something genuinely transcendent. It's an album that rewards deep listening and patience, revealing new details and emotional depths with each encounter. In a world increasingly defined by absence