Soulside 'A Brief Moment in the Sun'
When a band gets back together, who are they doing it for? One of the most fascinating aspects of A Brief Moment in the Sun, the first full length album from Washington, D.C.-based punk act Soulside since 1989’s Hot Bodi-Gram, is the feeling of how important this record is for the band members themselves. Yes, the announcement of a new Soulside album was greeted with joy by fans of this underappreciated but highly influential act. But the new album is not a phoned-in victory lap for the act; it is a provocative and timely record that speaks to the contemporary moment in vital ways. A Brief Moment in the Sundocuments a band rediscovering the joy of making music together, while still pushing forward into new sonic territory.
Soulside plays X-Ray Arcade, March 16, with J. Robbins, and IfIHadAHiFi.
According to Soulside bassist Johnny Temple, such an outcome is not surprising. It would have been easy for the band to return to the formula that made both Hot Bodi-Gram and its predecessor, 1988’s Trigger, so successful; in other words, to give fans wanted they wanted to hear. Yet as Temple explains, “I don’t think we’re at all driven by nostalgia. We’re not trying to harken back to thirty years ago. It’s a completely present-tense operation.” And while noting that there remains “a strong musical throughline” between A Brief Moment in the Sun and the band’s earlier material, Temple also believes that “the music we make is in some ways to me more vital now than when we were making music together in the late 1980s.”
Music of Reconciliation
One hears evidence of this vitality in the ways that Temple, along with guitarist Scot McCloud and drummer Alexis Fleisig, push the signature Soulside sound in new directions. “Runner” retains the rawness of ‘80s-era DC punk, while tracks like “Resolved” and album standout “Reconstruction” highlight a more mature, more soulful approach to songwriting. “When I listen to the new Soulside record it sounds like Soulside,” explains Temple. “But it also sounds like a growth—it’s not a repetition of what we did before.”
A crucial component of this growth are the lyrics and vocals of Bobby Sullivan. Sullivan’s desire to use his lyrics to push Soulside in a more political direction contributed to the band’s break up in 1989. Soon after, Temple, McCloud, and Fleisig would start the seminal indie act Girls Against Boys—without Sullivan. In real ways, A Brief Moment in the Sun sounds like a moment of reconciliation between Sullivan and the rest of the band. One sees this most clearly in Sullivan’s lyrics: they remain intensely personal, but they are also intensely political. “70s Heroes” positions Black activists Assata and Zayd Shakur as “real American heroes” who should serve as role models for “a new generation coming.” This relationship between past and present is further explored in “Reconstruction,” which connects the post-Civil War era to the present struggle for racial justice, reminding us that both resistance and violence are deeply rooted in the American experience.
There is a joy in hearing Sullivan once again sing with Soulside, a joy also felt by his fellow bandmates. Playing in Soulside, Temple concludes, “means so much to me. Then band means a lot to me in 2023. I really, really love my bandmates, and I love making music with them. It’s an incredible privilege and honor.” This sentiment is seemingly reflected in album closer “It’s All About Love,” in which Sullivan finds that “there’s another life ahead.” Confrontations may still arise, but, Sullivan sings, “We’ll have a heart-to-heart instead of going head-to-head.” And as the song ends with the line “it’s all about love,” one gets the feeling that Sullivan is singing not only to an imagined audience, but also to his very real fellow band members.
