Sun God

British fusion band Sunday Driver’s latest release is their first since the EP Flo in 2014. While Flo was a delicately beguiling mix of English folk and South Indian devotional song, here they’ve attempted to beef things up by introducing pop and rock elements.

It works best on the album’s title-track where jazzy electric guitar, spindly sitar, buoyant tabla and pounding drums suggest a prog-rock update on Ananda Shankar’s late-60s crossover experiments – and it’s nicely topped off by singer Chandy Nath’s gentle smoulder. But much of the rest of the album falls somewhat flat. Tracks like ‘For a Few Regrets More’ strive for stadium rock grandeur but feel plodding and pedestrian, while ‘Time Machine’ incorporates a silly ska skank. At the same time, the Indian ingredients seem overly buried in the mix: British bhangra pioneer, tabla maestro Kuljit Bhamra is present throughout but criminally under-used. Inevitably, it’s the less cluttered tracks – closer in spirit to Flo – that shine the most. ‘Mathanga’ is a quiet prayer to the Hindu deity Ganesha, revealing Nath’s sweetly swooning vocals and the album closes on a fragile ballad, ‘Keepsake’, with Nath singing in the Telugu tongue over folky acoustic guitar and cello. It just about makes up for the skanking.