The do-it-yourself nature of Vintage Revolution, with its looped drumbeats, introverted vocals, and campy keyboards, doesn’t make it the kind of ambitious first record a band would aim for. However, The Sunshine Factory takes this ostensible gawky tinkering very seriously to create something that transcends the awkwardness of the process.
Vintage Revolution is an album of towering waves of guitars that are dabbled with sweet and sometimes goofy keyboards. “Roving Eye” is one of the tracks where the guitars take the center-stage along with showy synthesizer sounds that come straight out of an ’80s goth album, yielding a glam rock sound that has a charming identity crisis. Clumsy it may seem, but the band pulls it off when it tries to create a rock number with rinky-dink drum beats with “Hey Spaceman,” which also has this same combination of swirling guitars and showy keyboards resulting in a competing glam-fest.
The cuteness of Vintage Revolution is undeniable, as it doesn’t shy away from dainty poppiness – “Stealing Kisses,” “I’m Believing (In Love Again)” – with words like “You’re the reason I’m believing in love again” sung with some conviction. But this album is just a bit skittish to be a perky pop record, although “My Love” and “Skin As Smooth As Porcelain” are pitch perfect dazzlingly jaunty electronic numbers.
In the midst of the synthesizer and guitar showiness on Vintage Revolution, there is also a little bit of subtlety in the form of “Pheena And The Truth About Whales” with its hushed layers of calming music, but this is just a short instrumental. On a bigger scale, there are clunky and more or less karaoke-like tracks like “Daisies” and “Surrounded By The Sound” where the vocals and music are too shy. However, the lack of grace of these numbers is by no way embarrassing; they add to the overall gracelessness of this record, which is adorable to say the least.
