Silver Sun

Fronting this London quartet is the bespectacled James Broad, whose occasionally perverse lyrics sit amid sugar-coated melodies awash in a heavy buzzsaw guitar assault and heavenly harmonies. Positioned somewhere between the Buzzcocks and Cheap Trick, Silver Sun have cultivated a sizable pop following, particularly in Japan, and have even earned notice in Keraang! magazine, the publication chiefly associated with everything "heavy metal." Their initial outing, issued as Sun, arrived as a four-track EP on Polydor in 1996. The EPs Last Day and Lava appeared shortly thereafter. In Japan, the ten tracks from those EPs were gathered onto a single disc titled You Are Here. Following yet another EP, Golden Skin, the band’s self-titled debut album surfaced in 1997. Delivering a major wallop, that debut ranked among the year’s most exhilarating releases. Two further singles emerged from it: “Julia” and a re-release of “Lava.” At the close of 1997, Japan received a third Silver Sun album there, B Is for Silver Sun, which assembled eleven B-sides issued since You Are Here. Mid-1998 brought Too Much Too Little Too Late, an EP of cover versions that included songs by Rush, My Bloody Valentine, the Muffs, and Deniece Williams. Neo Wave, the second album, appeared in October 1998.