I’m not going to lie, reader: When I first saw Bedroom Cowboy come across my large virtual stack of eight-track tapes, I read Sun Era as “Sun Ra”. I know Sun Era is a Maryland-based indie musician with a few solid releases under their belt, and not the influential jazz and experimental artist with prolific output between the 1950s and 1990s. (After all, we’ve covered Sun Era before!) But in my overtired state I thought, “You know what, I wouldn’t put it past Sun Ra to release an album called Bedroom Cowboy.”
Regardless of whether they are or not “Sun Ra”, Sun Era — a.k.a. Jack Grebenchenko — has their own prolific and experimental DIY career brewing. This new album – their fourth – continues in the vein of independence, self-producing crisp indie jams from their bedroom and basement. They sing and play all the instruments, mix and master everything, and release it without any outside assistance. Where some might argue that true DIY doesn’t exist anymore — the days of passing cassette tapes and playing in friends’ basements a relic of the past — some might mark that as a load of nonsense. Sun Era would prove the latter.
For Bedroom Cowboy, Sun Era names the album after their home studio, which they call their frontier, playing off the idea of the “space cowboy”. If Captain Kirk rode on his horse (the Enterprise) through the vast reaches of space to boldly go where no one had gone before, then Sun Era is riding their horse (their guitar, drum kit, and other assorted sounds) to seek out new chords and new instrumentations. Of course, they take influence from other explorers who helped draw the musical maps: Alex G, Built to Spill, and Fog Lake, to name a few. But their journey is very much their own, and they’re all too happy to take us along for the ride.
On the new album, Sun Era starts us orbiting the galaxy of grunge with “Greenback Baby” before sailing through the indie prairie on “Snow in July” and “Grounded”, where little asteroids of Midwestern emo float past. We pick up a little speed passing the planets and moons of punk on “Dusty” and “Squirrel”, where getting a bit too close to their atmospheres heats up the distortion in the guitars and the fire in Sun Era’s voice. After that, it’s back to a bit of a breather on the back half of the album, with “Suckerpunchbowl”, “Robot Kid”, “Zoo”, and “Big Dogs”. They’re all good tracks for leaning the captain’s chair or driver’s seat or saddle back a bit and letting the autopilot take over until we reach out destination, wherever that is.
The mixing of space and Western metaphors is intentional, by the way. This is an album with some wonderful lyricism. Sun Era invokes visions of animals (elephants, horses, and dinosaurs specifically, as well as in the song titles “Squirrel” and “Big Dogs”). Ironically, “Zoo” has no animals in its lyrics, but does feature the moon as a metaphor for frustration. There are also the usual suspects of any good songwriting present in Bedroom Cowboy: Pining, doubt, grappling with fear, indescribable pain, and processing deep emotions without name.
Bedroom Cowboy features on its cover the titular room: Sunbeams streak onto the comforter, casting light (perhaps that of creation!) on the surface from which Sun Era created a good chunk of the album. The Vox amp peeks out from the right edge; above it, art of spaceships and new worlds feature prominently on the wall. It must serve as inspiration for Sun Era: The only limits to making music are the farthest edges of the universe, and who knows how far out those go?
So again, while Sun Era may not be Sun Ra, both musicians forged their own path through the world to produce and share what grew in their souls. Their names are one letter off, and their musical styles are noticeably different. But you cannot doubt that Sun Era, like the many who explored the twisting staves and clefs before, has trod great ground so far in making a career for themselves in the DIY scene, even though they surely have much more land — or sky, or space, or sea — ahead of them. Only they know where the journey will take them next.
Take a listen to Bedroom Cowboy below:
Written by Will Sisskind
