Hill Climber, Sunny

[Transcribed from a conversation during the fifth hour around a keg of Miller High Life.]

Steve: Me and my friend, we went to a Vulfpeck concert. His girlfriend recommended it. She dumped him the next day. She realized the next morning that long distance is not going to work.

Joe: I'll say that, in the past 166 weeks, there hasn't been an album that Pam was more pissed off about than Hill Climber. That opening song that sounds like the Golden Girls theme song? Every time I'd put it on, she'd be like, "Turn this shit off!" She did not write a review.

Drew: Next time I pick an album, I'm picking Astro Lounge by Smash Mouth.

Joe: Okay... Sunny? You wanna talk about Vulfpeck?

Sunny: This is some funky shit! This is some funky, funky shit.

Joe: In a good way or bad way?

Sunny: In a good way! Steve's story? I also had a similar experience. I once took a girl up on a trip to Montreal. We had a nice trip. It was one of those relationship trips—maybe you guys have had similar—where it's a make-it-or-break-it thing. If this trip goes really well, I think we have a few good years ahead of it. If it goes poorly, it's clearly a harbinger for what's coming.

Joe: So wait, your relationship rested on Vulfpeck?

Sunny: I wish it did. I don't even remember who played. On day four, we went to a concert. We both sat down, we sat there for an hour and a half, we got up, and she said: "I don't know if this is working." Vulfpeck, on the other hand... Vulfpeck is great. I wrote a bunch of notes while I was driving so I can't read them anymore. The two prongs I'll take is: One, what I liked about Vulfpeck the most. You've seen this I Love You, Man movie? With Paul Rudd and Jason Segel? When did that movie come out, Drew?

Drew: 2009.

Sunny: 2009.

Joe: IMDrewB.

Sunny: The naughts had a moment where these dudes—your Will Ferrells, your Jason Segels, your Paul Rudds—were doing hangout movies. Good Time movies. We decry Adam Sandler now, shitting those out every few months, just making a buck with his friends. But they were doing it back then! They were a little more artistic, so we let it go. I Love You, Man is the epitome of that movie genre. That was a dumb movie where guys were just having a good time. One of the lines I remember from it was when Karen from The Office—

Drew: Rashida Jones, daughter of Quincy Jones.

Joe: Also of The Office.

Steve: Jim made a terrible choice.

Sunny: —are just chatting, and they have that bit where they're like "Slappin' da bass. Just slappin' da bass, mon." And it was a few minutes of them trying to do a Jamaican accent. But it was just them having fun. And that's the sense that I got from Vulfpeck! Just some folks having a good time. I would split the album into two main halves, and it's interesting how they sequence them. It's '90s boy band, a parody of '90s boy band, mixed with funk. A little Backstreet Boys, a little boy band from Bob's Burgers... but doing funk. They do their "Half of the Way" thing. There's a song in the middle—a carnival-esque song about loneliness. "Lonely Town." And then a love song. All are fine. 20 minutes in, and I'm thinking okay, this is an alright album. But then the back half is when they really come alive. There's the survival song, where they start the whole funk thing. There's something else, and then there's "Lost My Treble Long Ago" song, and this is where I'm really getting into it—

Joe: You're talking about the instrumentals?

Sunny: Yeah! Purely instrumental tracks. Most of it is the guy just working the bass guitar. Slappin' da bass! He's just having a good time. And I'm having a good time too! And that goes into "Disco Ulysses." Which is a disco song that is fun. You're along for the ride. There's one more track, "It Gets Funkier IV" or whatever, and, yeah, the whole thing blows up, but it doesn't fucking matter! The smart thing Vulfpeck did was realize that these are the best tracks we have. These are fun, these are funky. Some of them tell a story. Some of these are jazz funk, whatever, we're doing it all. We can show we can do it all. If the whole album was that '70s disco shit? Then I'd say: fucking boring! So pre-padding it with boy-band-ish funk, light funk, kinda getting you into it, then you're already there. And you get four back-to-back instrumental funk songs? You're funking around? You're having a good time. A good 41 minutes.

Joe: I feel like that was the opposite take of what everyone had in early 2020. I appreciate the take!

Sunny: I haven't read the reviews. I'm curious.

Joe: I might have a different take right this second, but I feel like the reviews were like: what the fuck are five instrumentals tacked on to the end of this album?

Sunny: They didn't buy it.

Joe: I almost have a different take now.

Sunny: Please.

Joe: Just having listened to it over the past couple days. Maybe it is related to the whole thing where Vulfpeck... did you read about the Spotify thing?

Sunny: I know nothing about this band at all.

Joe: Vulfpeck was the band that, maybe ten years ago, put a silent album on Spotify, and told all their fans to play it on repeat while they slept. So all the fans played it, and they made twenty thousand dollars, and used that to go on tour for free, basically. And the dude went on, like, Jim Kramer's whatever, fucking CNN money show or whatever. The frontman was just like, "Yeah, this is something we did to pump money out of Spotify." It was great. And I kind of viewed the back half in the same money-forward way. Here are these blank instrumental tracks. Maybe there is a hope that some fucking TikTok rapper or something is going to rap over them.

Sunny: And get mad royalties.

Joe: Yeah! I wonder if it was motivated by money. Or if it was truly motivated by dudes just jamming in a room.

Sunny: That's a great point. Like, does it get justified in retrospect. Fifty years go by, and no one picks it up? Well, then it was just some dudes jamming and having a good time. If all four of these blow up and become popular tracks... and they could! The texture is there.

Joe: I was trying to imagine, like, Saba rapping over "Soft Parade" or something.

Sunny: Another thing is—and this album isn't unique in this way, but more just talking about the gestalt of "boys having a good time"—what are your thoughts about when people include snippets of studio chatter into the songs of the album?

Joe: As long as it's not excessive.

Sunny: Was this album excessive?

Joe: No. I guess I did notice some of this at the beginning and ends of some songs. That's fine. I mean... I have an issue with it when it becomes a BTS thing, like a 25-minute album and there are five minutes in the middle of them just talking. Get the fuck out of here, man. If there's stuff at the end like "did you get that?" or "that was great," then I don't have an issue. Do you have an issue with it?

Sunny: I don't have an issue. Now that you bring up the BTS point—you're right, I don't have a problem with this at all. But if you were to compare the whole "we added a little pre- and post- because we were excited" to keeping it clean? It just has a different aesthetic. One of... there's not a casualness of going to a record studio, recording an album, and putting it out there. To include a little bit is a deliberate action. I don't have a problem with it, but it's a choice. If you choose to do it, you have to be conscious of why you are doing it. In this album it works okay. BTS is an extreme example where it doesn't work at all.

Joe: You're saying that it devalues the songs?

Sunny: Not these songs. But it could! If you're going for something where it's not just "guys having a good time, doing some funk, doing some pop," whereas if you were doing something like "we are doing a funk project, or funk concept album," then I think it would devalue it. Here, it's not the case. But it came to my mind, because it was prominent.

Joe: Sam, we're talking Vulfpeck!

Sam: I heard Sunny say "Vulfpeck" like 20 minutes ago, and you are still talking about them? Does one of you like them and one of you hate them?

Joe: This is Sunny's review.

Sunny: I had a nice time listening to Hill Climber.

Sam: You had never heard of Vulfpeck before this?

Sunny: I didn't know anything about them. I expected them to be a Norwegian metal band, just based on the name.

Sam: I went to the Sasquatch Music Festival in Washington. Hannah and I went, pre-kids. 2017 maybe? We went to this music festival. Vulfpeck was playing. They were a live band that fucking killed it. The lead singer was a Lamson-y... a fuckboy. A Lamson-y, Bradley-Cooper-y...

Drew: A simpleton with technical skill.

[laughter]

Joe: What? That's how you describe Lamson? A "simpleton with technical skills"?

Sunny: No, he said "fuckboy with technical skills."

Steve: You guys talking about Lamson?

Drew: Lamson is the most technically proficient guitarist I've ever met, out of people I personally know. He's a great guitarist.

Sunny: You're going to melt his heart.

Drew: He's technically proficient! He's got the most... he can fucking jam. But he doesn't have the heart and soul. I don't know. In terms of just sitting in front of a guitar... he can noodle like a motherfucker. He can fucking play.

Joe: This is all part of your review, right?

Sunny: That's what I said! This Lamson shit has gotta be in here!

Sam: What was your argument, though?

Sunny: No argument. The biggest thing that popped out at me was, in terms of what you said about them being a live band, is that they seemed like they were having fun in the studio. Both from the album split between pure funk instrumental and this boy band funk thing, and then all their tracks having a lot of chatter. If you're at a festival or something, that'd be normal! You'd be all about that.

Sam: They were a highlight of the festival!

[cutting a 20-minute argument about how many Oscar-winning actresses are still alive.]