All Over the Map

A Sunny Day in Glasgow's Ben Daniels finds new pop gloom on the other side of the planet.

by A.D. Amorosi

[ pop/rock ]

Ben Daniels is on a journey. Since he started A Sunny Day in Glasgow in 2005, the songwriter-guitarist has moved from West Philly to Canada to Australia, lost his singing sisters Lauren and Robin to school and relationships, and found cool new collaborators in synth player/sampler Josh Meakim and vocalist Annie Fredrickson.

Jarring, right? But noise-pop practitioner Daniels seems to have taken everything in stride. He sounds as happily miserable as ever, and the major chord melodies of new Ashes Grammar seem to have benefited from the tumult.

"Losing my sisters was definitely tough — plans for Ashes nearly went out the window when that happened," says Daniels. "But overall, the songs kept me going. It was just me who was in a constant state of doom."

There's plenty of echoing ambient drone in new cuts like "Failure" and "Shy" that would have fit fine on 2007's Bloody Valentine-like Scribble Mural Comic Journal. But Ashes opts for denser melodies and bigger beats, adding levity to angst-laden lyrical sentiments like "Fall forward, feel failure."

Part of the openness comes from moving Sunny Day recording operations from an apartment at 45th and Osage with "one mic, and guitars plugged directly into my Mbox thingy" (where Scribble was born) to Ashes' home-base warehouse in Lambertville, N.J., recorded on a brief trip to the U.S.

Then again, it could come from one confident aspiration. "I don't really have any goals other than to not write boring songs," says Daniels. "Melody is just another way to convey information." The conveyance is crucial to his existence. "I really love making music. I pour my heart into it. It's the one part of my life that isn't half-assed."

The funniest aspect of Daniels' self-aggrandizing rap is how it feeds into his love, fear and loathing of his former hometown. Daniels knows how suffocating Philly can be, and says it feels like a prison in the same breath he enthuses about how much he loves it.

"It is wonderful to be back," he says. "I miss America and Philly so much. There are so many common household animals that can kill you in Australia. I don't know why I everleft Philly."

That's a joke. He left for love; his girlfriend works in Sydney.

But thinking about Philadelphia reminds him of how he ignored the people he cared about most while making Scribble — "some record that three people might listen to once and then say 'I don't get it' — and how his band fell apart but for a moment. And how he bases most of his life and music on desperation. "I make all my decisions based on that." But he loves Ashes Grammar, loves this version of the band and how Meakim's synths "blows the sound up" and is happy to live Down Under.

"I would have moved to the bottom of the ocean if I could have then, so yeah, life's much better now. Who knows, maybe I'll learn something? Probably not, though."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

A Sunny Day in Glasgow play Tue., Dec. 15, 9 p.m., $10, with Ape School and Reading Rainbow, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com.