Release Radar: The Yellow Melodies 'Sunshine Pop'

Grey weather getting you down? The Spanish Quartet has just what you need.

Dec 01, 2023

Good Morning!

Today we’re listening to ‘Sunshine Pop’ by The Yellow Melodies.

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Anytime’s a good time for some jangle pop, but that’s particularly the case this time of year as the days seem impossibly short, and the sky is permanently grey. Even when the sun can be bothered to show up, it still hangs low and doesn’t hang around for long. Shadows are in short supply, and there’s a surplus of blandness. Stay here long enough; you’ll hear my timeworn joke about “Joy Division and a nap” weather.

Enter The Yellow Melodies. The Spanish Quartet has just released Sunshine Pop, a long player combining three EPs (Sunshine Pop vols. 1, 2, & 3) made during the pandemic. The band previously celebrated The Ramones’ ‘Pleasant Dreams’ turning 4o by putting their own spin on it.

This is a group that knows their way around melodies and sugary hooks.

“They simply concentrate on what they are best at, i.e. playful pop in it’s most luscious and undiluted form.” (Janglepophub)

Sunshine Pop delivers song after song of sweetness and light straight from the C86 factory floor (it’s not lost on me that one of the standout tracks is titled ‘C86 e Indiepop’). And not a second too soon, either. Every track here feels like it’s tailor-made to chase the blues away. Frontman Rafa Skam has crafted a world where it’s all sun all the time. There are no clouds, visibility is clear and a million, and wind chill is only something that happens in faraway places.

The days’ll get longer here soon enough. In the meantime, we have records like Sunshine Pop to lean on and help get us through.

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