Rating: 
Keath Mead is South Carolina boy and self taught musician, and Sunday Dinner is his debut album. Recorded in California at the home of one Chaz Bundick, of Toro Y Moi, the album comes off as a mix between these two distinguished styles: southern ease mixed with California lightness. The result is delightful, crammed full with bouncing pop tunes that make for easy listening.
Like the best kind of end to a relaxing weekend, Sunday Dinner kicks off without a hitch with “Waiting.” Some sugary synths come winding in, scattering around lightly while the lower synths ground the tune all before Keath’s high-pitched, yet still soulful, vocals chime in. This generates a pop song gently evolving and changing modes from the east to west coasts: from slow heated and sleepy to the breezier and permanently chill California style. It’s around two minutes into the song before it reaches its full potential and the drums and some ooh-la-la’s bring it on home. “Grow Up,” the following track, feels kind of like a sunnier Mac Demarco track; the guitar licks are clean and crisp but also distorted and serve as the backbone for the bopping nature of the song. Mead’s vocals and lyrics work together, telling you to “Grow up and act your age,” talking about the self-centered nature of youth, but the overall mood of this song is far from serious. Instead, it feels filled with whimsy and effortlessness, which is the trend of this album; light and airy pop songs with serious, often heavily grounded lyrics to give you that kind of delightful dichotomy.
But the tracks on here aren’t so bouncy that they’re overwhelming. As I said before, the lyrics tend of provide a sense of balance and gravity to the Sunday Dinner that Keath Mead has invited us to. The style itself also gains gravity as it progresses, like you see on later tracks “Quiet Room,” that provides an almost gothic tone with its alien synth parts and heavily distorted vocals. Although sunshine and bounce aren’t terribly far away, as moments like these provide just the right amount of weight before we return to brighter numbers like “Polite Refusal.” Though it begins with those same synth sounds, we get to the choral hook and the soaring vocals and acoustic guitar take over the track and there’s no shortage of sunshine.
Once you get to the end of the album, it’s only a matter of figuring out which tracks were your favorites and which were just really good. Sunday Dinner is brimming with pop gems and enough variation in style to keep your attention all the way through to its termination. This debut from Keath Mead has certainly put him on my map, and if you’re into sunny pop with melancholic undertones, then it should certainly put him on your map too.
Sometimes I like to mix it up a bit and go down a slightly different path musically, and boy, has Lanks satisfied that desire with “Hold Me Closer.” Lanks is the project of Melbourne artist Wil Cuming, and it focuses on turning your folk expectations on its head with electronic elements that will have you wondering if it acceptable to dance to this song, wherever it may be finding you. “Hold Me Closer” is a perfect example of this type of groove, with its constant beat that kicks things off, a brief blip of folksy sounding music, and then the eminent addition of more and more electronic elements, while keeping that twangy guitar. Sure, it’s a weird phenomenon, but one I’m digging. What do you think?
