Sun Hotel’s sophomore full length record, Rational Expectations is now available via Community Records, their first new music in two years and first full length since 2010. Rational Expectations is the band’s swan song, their final recording and ultimately, the band’s best work. Moving on to pursue other projects, Sun Hotel spent celebrated the band and their new record with a release / farewell show this past Saturday with a packed house at One Eyed Jack’s in New Orleans.
Sun Hotel – led by the brusque vocals of songwriter Tyler Scurlock, guitarist Alex Hertz, Ross Farbe (Native America), and John St. Cyr (Woozy/Native America) formed in early 2009. Interested in building a community for their music within their hometown, the members of Sun Hotel and their New Orleans friends and musical peers in Caddywhompus founded Chinquapin Records, a full service collective that quickly emerged as a quintessential inflection point for the city’s DIY music scene.
Early versions of Sun Hotel’s latest release, Rational Expectations, began popping up in live sets even before the band officially delivered their standout 2011 EP Gifts, which itself signaled the culmination of almost three years of constant touring, writing and recording. Since then, this new album went through at least two complete drawing-board revamps, allowing so much time to pass that it’s easy to forget that Sun Hotel was once the Big Easy’s standardbearer for productivity and prolificness.
The long gestation period of Rational Expectations has distilled the final product down to the unsentimental core of what made Sun Hotel such an enchanting group to follow over the years. Their earnest ambivalence is suddenly and surprisingly devoid of pathos, their flirtations with post-punk are more angular and driving than ever, and there is an urgency and focus that brings to mind their thrilling debut EP.