Sun June Examine the ‘Heady Early Days’ of Their Relationship in ‘Somewhere’

Sun June’s forthcoming sophomore album, Somewhere, could just as easily be called Somewhere Else. The Austin, TX “regret pop” five-piece—helmed by vocalist/ keyboardist/guitarist Laura Colwell—has a knack for conjuring states of longing and dislocation with evocative, slow-burning synth-folk fare, and that’s exactly what they do in their new single, “Everything I Had,” out today and featured below.

We could move to Los Angeles / Know I hated it when everybody did,” Colwell sings in track over quiet, layered instrumentation. “I’m not getting any younger / Everything I had, I want it back.” For Colwell and her partner, guitarist Stephen Salisbury, there is humor in these knowing, nostalgic glances. “We find a lot of the sadness of our lives hilarious,” Colwell recently told American Songwriter over the phone.

The accompanying video, meanwhile, is a tribute to the band’s current hometown, showing Colwell performing around a deserted Austin, stopping by some of the Live Music Capital of the World’s COVID-shuttered haunts along the way. Sun June may not be able to play a traditional record release show any time soon, but that doesn’t stop Colwell from parking outside Cheer Up Charlie’s for a solo set on the hood of a Honda Odyssey.

“Everything I Had” comes after previous singles “Singing,” “Bad Girl,” and “Karen O.” All four tracks appear on Somewhere, which Colwell has described as a “bigger, fatter, sadder” follow-up to Sun June’s 2018 debut album, Years. The band is rounded out by lead guitarist Michael Bain, bassist Justin Harris, and drummer Sarah Schultz.

We caught up with Colwell and Salisbury about moving in together, writing and recording Somewhere, and applying their film editing backgrounds to their musical endeavors. Check out the full interview and watch the “Everything I Had” flick below.

American Songwriter: Where are y’all right now?

Laura Colwell: We’re in Austin, but Stephen’s been in North Carolina. He came here for the holidays. He drove 20 hours pretty much straight, and now we’re in an Airbnb quarantining together.

AS: Wow, romantic getaway!

Stephen Salisbury: I’ve always wanted to spend Christmas Eve in an RV park in Mississippi!

AS: What’s the story behind your new single “Everything I Had”?

Stephen: There’s definitely something about Austin—it’s growing so fast and it changes so quickly—that it feels like a different city in some respects year to year. There’s something very Austin to us about that song—it’s kind of lamenting the loss of youth, having to grow up. We just had one verse, I remember demoing it and sending it to Laura just the beginning, and then we finished the song together when the record was taking shape about how relationships change over time. Even if you’re in a relationship, sometimes it’s nice to look back at the heady early days of the relationship.

AS: I sense that these things—lamenting and loss and change—are big Sun June themes.

Stephen: I’d say that’s true. It doesn’t really matter if it’s communicated or not, but I think when we make it, there’s more humor in it on our end than comes across.

Laura: Yeah, we find a lot of the sadness of our lives hilarious.

Stephen: I think there’s a bridge that talks about piling into a cab, and that was funny to us because it dates [the scene] to, I don’t know, pre-Uber.

AS: Back when cabs were a thing.

Stephen: Yeah, back when you were like, ‘Oh shit, it’s going to take us 30 minutes to get a cab?’

AS: What are some other themes or feelings or arcs that you see as really important to the album?

Laura: Well, we started making a vibe/mood to the record by pretending we were an Albuquerque prom band. And so the arc of the night at prom is something that—sorry, Stephen just rolled his eyes! [laughing]

Stephen: I did not roll my eyes! I want to hear what you’re saying.

Laura: The evolution of love is part of it. Expectation versus reality is part of that experience where maybe in the beginning stages you’re really pumped, excited, there’s all of this good energy, and then it will quickly blow up at times.

AS: Am I right that you two started dating between your last record and this one?

Laura: We started dating before the first record came out, but we moved in together between the two.

AS: Did that change how you approached the writing?

Stephen: I would say that even if we were together during some of the writing of Years, we weren’t looking at our relationship.

Laura: It definitely changed things, being in the same environment and always around each other. 

Stephen: We made a joke about Years that it was a we’ve-been-broken-up-a-long-time record, like a break up record years later. And I guess the joke about this one is that it’s a we’ve-been-together-for-a-long-time record. There’s also just a lot of throughlines, I think, between the two records.

Laura: Well, I think there’s lots of stuff that’s very similar in how you view your life—like always looking backwards.

AS: There are so many references to place throughout the album—both specific locations but also states of transit or movement or longing or dislocation. Is that too strong of a word, dislocation?

Laura: I don’t think so.

Stephen: I love that word. That’s the first time I’ve heard it and I’ll have to steal it!

AS: Where does that sense of wanting to be somewhere else come from?

Laura: I definitely had it with Years, with “Homes,” which is a little on the nose. I don’t really have a family home, personally. Everyone’s really scattered in my family, and there’s no place to go back to [where] I grew up. So there’s that literal dislocation of family, and of a center. I find a lot of it in Stephen and his family too. Certainly my family is there for me, no doubt, but having a physical space does a lot to your psyche—and not having one. There’s also us both being in Austin.

Stephen: Yeah, Austin’s definitely a city of transplants, and the band is from all over the country. Also Austin is incredibly young, so it’s a weird unnatural population distribution.

AS: Were these songs mostly written in Austin or elsewhere?

Laura: Mostly in Austin. Some in California.

AS: Are you two the primary songwriters?

Stephen: Yeah, and then everybody writes their own parts. Our guitarist, Michael, writes any guitar part that is noticeable. If it’s noticeably poorly-played, that’s me. But if it’s noticeably well-played, it’s him.

Laura: Michael has all the guitar melodies.

AS: Discussing your debut album, Years, one of you said “We picked songs that fit together.” How did you whittle down material for Somewhere? Did you go into the process knowing you wanted to bring certain songs together?

Laura: We have a lot of songs that are pieces of songs or unfinished songs, but we keep them going. It’s a little bit of whittling, but also writing for it once we figure it out.

Stephen: With Years, since it was our first record, we weren’t on a label and we were just doing it ourselves. So part of it was just like, ‘What songs can we do?’ Then we ended up with the record we ended up with. But for this one we knew that we were going to make it. We had a larger group of songs, and then we also wanted to have a sonic point of view. 

AS: A sonic point of view?

Stephen: Yeah, we wanted to have the songs live in a world together. 

AS: How would you describe that world?

Laura: Definitely the Albuquerque-prom-alternate-reality-of-global-cooling, if global cooling were a thing. That’s our silly version of it. The reality of it is we had more time to think about how big we could get, and we wanted to obviously expand where we were from the last record to where this record went. Space expansion was important, even if it’s layers of softer beds, ‘cause it is still a very quiet record, but it’s a lot bigger in comparison. ‘Bigger, fatter, sadder’ was the quote we gave FLOOD.

Stephen: We definitely wanted to add more synths and more instruments too. So with ‘Everything I Had’ there’s a piano line that’s layered with a lot of instruments. [With Somewhere we wanted to use] instruments we don’t play at practice, where Years was very much the instruments that we have at practice.

AS: Did you record to tape again, or was this a more digital process?

Laura: This was a more digital process. 

Stephen: What’s interesting is that Laura did a bunch of scratch vocals, like full vocal takes at the end of the recording day. When everybody was just sitting around in a room, she was just [recording] in the kitchen basically. And we ended up using almost all of those. Sometimes you think you know what you want to do, and then you surprise yourself, like ‘Oh, there is something to that other path that we didn’t think we were taking.’

AS: I read that you both work in film.

Laura: We met working in film. Stephen has moved onto more science pastures, but I still do. I work as an editor.

AS: Do you approach film editing and making music in the same ways?

Laura: Definitely just pouring over details very obsessively. That’s true in both cases. But it depends on the project—there’s some stuff that’s just a formula and I don’t think about it, and music is a chance to do more expression. I think with music videos we enter that [space] as a new world, ‘cause we make our own music videos.

Stephen: It’s kind of like the choice between the tape approach and the more piecemeal approach—I think we wanted to make the record-making process closer to the editing process. When you’re editing something, particularly when it doesn’t have a script, you can make random choices and they can end up working and surprising you.

Laura: Yes!

Stephen: That’s a really good experience. I think we wanted that. And it was a little more like editing, this record, because we took the songs home and we had our own Pro Tools set-up and sometimes we moved things around. But we want to push even further into that arena. I think we’ll have our hands on our third record even more closely and we’ll really push it into the editing space where you’re like, ‘What would it sound like if we moved this over there?’ 

AS: I assume you can’t really do a traditional record release show right now?

Laura: Things are so up-in-the-air. I don’t know how we’re going to do anything for the record release, considering that the world is the way that it is. And Austin is back at Stage 5, so you’re not allowed to actually gather with anyone. 

Stephen: Before the shutdown, between our tours, Laura started playing solo shows and I’m a huge fan of Laura’s. Seeing those solo shows was a big highlight of pre-pandemic shows for me.

Laura: It was a big highlight for me as well.

Stephen: I’m excited about the idea of hearing some of these songs just her and a guitar or a keyboard. We’ll see. From my point of view, that would be a fun way to see these in a live setting, even if it’s streamed.

Laura: We tried doing a couple tapings, which we will be releasing closer to the album, just to hopefully give the opportunity for some of these songs to be performed live. It’s so hard to figure it all out. Pre-pandemic there was definitely momentum and a plan to make [2020] a big year for us.

Somewhere is out February 5 via Run For Cover and Keeled Scales. You can pre-order it here.

Photo by Santiago Dietche