A Sunny Day In Glasgow

A Sunny Day in Glasgow emerged in the mid-2000s with synth-laden experimental noise-pop that echoed shoegaze acts like My Bloody Valentine, but gave the sound their own interpretation. The band formed when Philadelphia native Ben Daniels returned from a few years in the U.K. and began recording songs with vocal help from his sisters Lauren and Robin. They put some of the tracks together and released them as an EP called The Sunniest Day Ever in March 2006. The EP charted at number one on New York's WNYU, the songs started bouncing around online, and soon enough, Pitchfork gave the first track on their EP, "C'mon," a four-star rating. Indie labels started to pay attention, and the group snagged a deal with Notenuf Records in October 2006. They recorded their first full-length album, Scribble Mural Comic Journal, in 2006 and released it, along with an EP of outtakes called Tout New Age, the following year. After touring behind the album, the band scaled back to Ben Daniels and multi-instrumentalist Josh Meakim and they moved from Montreal, where they had recorded Scribble Mural Comic Journal, to New Jersey. During the long process, the duo added Anne Fredrickson on vocals and cello. Their second album, Ashes Grammar, was finally released in 2009 by Mis Ojos Discos. For the tour that followed, the trio added drummer Adam Herndon, bassist Ryan Newmyer, and vocalist Jen Goma. This lineup released the Nitetime Rainbows EP in early 2010, followed by the recorded-on-tour album Autumn, Again later in the year. By this time all six members of the band lived in different cities, Daniels having moved to Australia with the rest scattered across the U.S. When the session for the next album began, Daniels took a back seat in the process for the first time, giving main lyric writing and production duties over to Goma and Meakim, respectively, with Fredrickson adding string arrangements, Newmyer deconstructing and rebuilding songs, and Herndon providing a wealth of percussion. The sessions stretched over a couple years at Jeff Zeigler's Uniform Recording studio in Philadelphia, and the resulting album, Sea When Absent, was released by Lefse Records in the summer of 2014.