It’s been a while since I got wind of a band with a fun name (although Venice Treacle was a pretty good one). No, folks, I have not been able to stop saying “Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine” since I read the words on my screen. Try it. Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine. I promise it’s fun.
And because it sounds so nice, you’ve got to read it twice, the NYC-based band named their debut album after themselves. Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine by Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine is not so much a debut album as it is a ten-part symphony of fantasy, going from morning (or creation) to night (or apocalypse) and detailing through music the trip that takes place in between.
The band’s ringleader is Dave Tierney, a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who gives off Zappa and has played in a handful of punk bands, eschewing any semblance of traditional rock sound in search of something more transcendental. The new album has a distinct psychedelic sound, with plenty of reverb and tape delay to bounce around your brain, as well as vocal layers reminiscent of peak LSD-era Beatles and Beach Boys.
But unlike those two bands, I could find nothing about Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine aside from the lyrics on a third-party site, a co-hosting gig Tierney did with a NYC outfit called Real Punk Radio, and a live performance of a few of the album’s songs at the Bowery Electric in 2024. So I will try, using the best of my ability, to parse this record’s story for you.
Picture the first day of the end of the world – “Morning” – in which “the sun has risen today” but “the sun won’t rise again; today is the last day.” A minute-long swelling cacophony of sound wakes you up to the reality of the finiteness of the universe. But the final moment has been on its way for some time. Whether the “candlelight skyline lit up so bravely” is describing the sunrise or the world on fire is up for debate.
Then, in thick metaphor, “Tripping Down A Hole” defines the events that have led the world to this point, and how everything has turned upside-down. While the lyrics may have more musical utility than meaning – “Candy cane hatrack, Novocaine racetrack, now you’re lying flat” and “Vest made of handshakes, helium cupcakes, take another piece” are some lyrical snippets – their nonsensical nature adds to the sense of chaos the song evokes.
On “Plastic Man Is Born”, we hear of the transition between this world and the next: “From the last morning, first light is dawned/From without warning, the next world is born.” Plastic Man is the symbol of no meaning, of emptiness: “You are nothing now.” And while a new world would have nothing, being a blank slate, the song is also hinting at the metaphorical “nothing”. With the brain having no organic matter and therefore no ability to retain memory, Plastic Man exists “forgetting forgotten worlds”, meaning the new world is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the old one.
Perhaps “Celestial Briefcase” exists outside of the album’s overarching story, but it is a solid prog-rock masterpiece, turning the guitar overdrive up to thirteen and turning a pedestrian item – the titular briefcase – into a cosmic item through which one can experience a galaxy-wide journey. It feels like the kind of term Douglas Adams would have coined. The latter half of the chorus sounds like something out of a Jefferson Airplane track: “Do you know the combo? The code is all you need.”
The music slows down and gets rather syrupy on “The Prince Arrives at the Gates of the Machine”, which sounds like something a band sixty years ago would have dreamed up on top of a Tibetan mountain. Again, the lyrics consist of unconnected words that punctuate the music: “The prince enters the gates/Strong, time, survival handstand, owls, sound/Forever, again, now, green, now.”
But then we get to the “Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine Suite”, which is a symphony within the greater symphony of the album. Yes, think about that: Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine (the band) released a record titled Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine, on which there is a song titled “Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine Suite”. (I told you I wouldn’t get tired of typing that.) The first three movements correspond to the first three seasons of the year: “Spring”, “Summer”, and “Fall”. The fourth movement, however, bears the title “Andromeda”. These titles relate to the lyrics in each: “Spring” covers rebirth, “Summer” speaks of the sun, “Fall” evokes images of decay, and “Andromeda” is about flying off to space as everything dies on the planet below.
“Am I Talking?” describes full-blown out-of-body paranoia: “Did I say that? Or just think it?” It reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson’s Raoul Duke wandering through a Las Vegas casino with a head full of acid, seeing everyone as a huge reptile. Of course, one need not have taken drugs to have these neurotic thoughts. But often a substance has played some part in the proceedings. The song dances back and forth between Smashing Pumpkins and Surrealistic Pillow, symbolizing in music the jolting between the conscious and the unconscious.
“Green Children of Woolpit” has its roots in old English folklore: In the 12th century, villagers of Woolpit discovered a brother and sister with green skin who only ate raw broad beans. This otherworldly event feeds into the cosmic nature of the album, and while history has debunked the idea of the children being aliens, Tierney doesn’t count out future events of visitors from far-off worlds: “Green children of Woolpit/Will they ever come again?” The track ends with a little Mellotron riff that feels like “Strawberry Fields”; it’s a nice touch.
On “The Universe Is My Balloon”, Tierney sings of an escape from the world as it is, visualizing the Sun and Earth disappearing in the distance as he and we travel through the empty and airless expanse of space. There is a sense of neither direction nor time – “Up is down and behind and around/Sailing to yesterday where you can’t be found” – and as the elements have their way with our physical forms, our atoms return to the cosmos: “Growing cyclamens in the garden of your mind/Water them with star stuff one at a time.”
And as we touch the end of the universe, we reach the end of the album on “Goodnight (End Times)”. This dreamy coda acts as a thesis statement for the record: Every facet of every reality – even the empty Plastic Man’s – must come to an end sometime, with all matter evaporating into the mystery of space. And that finale may happen decades down the road, or it could happen in an hour: “Long ago, this moment didn’t seem so soon.” Where “Morning” warned us that “Today is the last day”, this last song echoes that lyric’s meaning: “Good night/There will be no good morrow.”
If you have forty-one minutes and a need to escape the world, you would do yourself a favor to put on Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine, turn the lights off in your bedroom, and stare upwards. All you have to do is imagine your ceiling giving way to the empty sky above, toward which you will float and feel your physical form flake away, letting your true nature free itself from the burden of gravity and taxes and social obligations and dissolve into the aether. You do not need any external substances to appreciate the experience, I promise.
Enjoy Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine by Plastic Manmade Sunshine Machine on whatever streaming service you enjoy most.
Written by Will Sisskind
