Album of the Week: Sun Coming Down

Every week I tell myself I'm going to gather some recent news tidbits regarding RC alumni. I see a lot of updates lately. But maybe that's because there are so many RC alumni now (336 and counting!). My ultimate plan is to add another section to the end of these Sunday posts, simply listing all those news items, who covered whose song, etc. I've just been lacking motivation lately for hobbies in general. I'll get back into it soon enough. If you're foolhardy enough to read these Sunday posts, then you'll eventually see it. Everyone else: get off your computer, you're scrolling Instagram too much.

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WEEK 337 — July 13-19, 2025

Sun Coming Down

by Ought

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY VOTE

CATEGORY OF VOTING: "Albums Based on Fatter, Older's Top Songs of 2015." This is Nate's old blog. You should know this already. Here's the blog post in question. There are actually three separate blog posts, each with 25 songs (the first two are linked in the final one), but for the purposes of this poll, I started at #1 and worked my way backwards. I skipped over RC alumni on there (#1 Future, #3 Kendrick Lamar, #4 Dan Deacon, #8 Titus Andronicus) and any artist that I honestly didn't want to be featured on Record Club (just #9 Nicki Minaj).

Here's what Nate had to say about "Beautiful Blue Sky" by Ought, his tenth-favorite song of 2015:

Every generation gets the Talking Heads it deserves. I am very happy with mine.

"Beautiful Blue Sky" sums up urban paranoia and still finds time to dance. Listening to this song is like watching a '60s satire film, like watching a Twilight Zone marathon on TV, like reading haunting sci-fi. It was one of the best pieces of dystopian fiction this year, and is the second-best post-punk song of the year.

LOSING ALBUMS: Dark Comedy by Open Mike Eagle (based on #7 "Dark Comedy Late Show"); Dreams Worth More Than Money by Meek Mill (based on #5 "B Boy" ft. Big Sean and A$AP Ferg); Fetty Wap by Fetty Wap (based on #11 "My Way"); The L-Shaped Man by Ceremony (based on #6 "The Separation"); Restarter by Torche (based on #2 "Restarter").

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Post-punk, art punk, noise rock, indie rock

RELEASED: September 18, 2015

LENGTH: 40:28

TRACKLIST:

1. Men for Miles
2. Passionate Turn
3. The Combo
4. Sun Coming Down
5. Beautiful Blue Sky
6. Celebration
7. On the Line
8. Never Better

LYRICS: Genius.com

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: the four members of Ought appear to each prefer he/him/his

ABOUT: Ought formed in 2011 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The band consists of Tim Darcy (guitars, vocals), Matt May (keyboards), Ben Stidworthy (bass), and Tim Keen (drums). They lived together in their practice space during the early years. They released three albums total, the first two with Constellation Records, and the final one with Merge. Both Pitchfork and XPN were pushing Ought's music. In 2021, Ought broke up. Darcy and Stidworthy immediately formed the band Cola, while Keen and his partner make music as N*JOY. Darcy's home was lost in the 2025 CA wildfires.

DISCOGRAPHY: Three studio albums, with Sun Coming Down being the second among them. The debut was 2014's More Than Any Other Day. The finale was 2018's Room Inside the World.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: a 2018 AMA with the band

WATCHING SOME SHIT: a Take Away Show from 2014

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: Last week was Of Montreal, and now Ought is of Montreal. Are their any other RC artists of Montreal? At least two! Operators and BIG|BRAVE. All three bands chosen by Nate... hmmm... could it be that he told us he was moving to Rochester, but actually moved to Montreal? I'm not saying either way.

Other than that, there's just the matter of the drummer of Cola, Evan Cartwright, also being the drummer for U.S. Girls. I can't think of anything else!

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: "Big Beautiful Sky" also appeared on Puke on Your Birthday's Top Songs of 2015 list, but at #16. On the Top Songs of 2014, "The Weather Song" from More Than Any Other Day dropped at #30. Most importantly, I wrote a mini-retrospective on Ought in a 2023 SO/SN/SB/SB, which means that, for the second week in a row, I have previously written too much on the blog about that week's RC artist, and will be forced to find a new angle in my review.

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OTHER ALBUMS TO CHECK OUT

LAST WEEK'S ALBUM: Freewave Lucifer f<ck f^ck f>ck by Of Montreal, and make sure to check out the reviews if you wanna see what we thought of it!

RC@5: We're relistening to the Record Club album we featured exactly five years ago this week. The RC album for this week in 2020 was Kick by INXS.

SHADOW RECORD CLUB: Each week, I'm exploring a genre of last week's album by listening to one of that genre's top-rated albums (but at the point, only if I can find a #1-rated album on that genre list that I'm not familiar with). Last week's Freewave Lucifer f<ck f^ck f>ck was a synthwave album. We're listening this week to Music 2 by FM Skyline & Equip.

NEXT WEEK'S RC ALBUM: In case you need some extra time with an album to write a review for it, you can get a head start on Balloonerism by Mac Miller!

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!