Reviews
“[A] fiercely intelligent sophomore album.”
Spin • Album Of The Week
“Ought make indie rock that sounds like how urbanity makes you feel: nervous, antsy, sometimes hostile, yet intoxicatingly vibrant. And Darcy, likewise, gesticulates like a dutiful office drone who’s played by the rules his whole life but just can’t take it anymore. Ought’s 2014 debut More Than Any Other Day, was an album of slowly unfurled epiphanies, stoking simmering tension into fiery, exultant release. Those sort of affirming moments are a little harder to come by on the more chaotic and caustic Sun Coming Down, but the album’s relentless drive and uncompromising attitude constitute their own special kind of thrill. If More Than Any Other Day was about the hard-fought, triumphant ascent, Sun Coming Down is the giddy, daredevil "wheeeeee!" down the other side of the peak.”
Pitchfork • 8.0
“There’s an overwhelming, all-pervading anxiety to Ought… [a] deeply impressive second album. Play this music loud enough, and it can have an almost physical effect, making jaws clench and tendons go taut. That stress-ball intensity was also there on the band’s debut, last year’s More Than Any Other Day. But Sun Coming Down builds on that feeling, showing us a band refining its attack in ways that bands ideally should do on their sophomore albums. Sun Coming Down isn’t some great leap beyond the last album — an album that, after all, is still less than a year and a half old. But it’s sharper and more focused, and also grander and more expansive.”
Stereogum • Album Of The Week
“Sun Coming Down is the very worthy child of More Than Any Other Day. Ought’s brand of schizophrenic, paranoid, patchwork songwriting could well make for an uneasy listen, but with every passage of brutal sonic assault they offer a warm bed of AM hooks, balancing every handful of poison with a batch of antidote. There’s a marked step forward in the deceptive depth of Sun Coming Down, and Ought perhaps traded in some of their debut longplayer’s immediacy in getting it, but their wit and emotional complexity remain stronger than ever..”
Drowned In Sound • 8/10
“It was a refreshing proposition to discover that Constellation Records were releasing a post-punk album full of spiky rhythms and choppy riffs. It was even more pleasing when 2014’s More Than Any Other Day also proved to be one of the best debut albums released that year. The sound of Sun Coming Down is even more economical than their debut. Ought ramble and twitch with greater freedom and intensity, the overall feeling being that of a band that embraces their inherent naturalism and doesn’t fastidiously agonise over retakes and overdubs. With simplicity in its sound, the brilliance of Sun Coming Down lies in the album's pacing. The natural shifting of tempos within and between tracks keeps the record feeling strikingly vital. Sun Coming Down offers plenty of what made More Than Any Other Day so compelling: the terse guitar work; the laconic vocal delivery; the simplicity of sound and style. Ought combine this with added emotional depth. There are no tricks on show here, the sound is refreshingly clean, the ethos is admirably simple, embracing the DIY punk spirit and spitting out a beautiful record that will also fill that Sonic Youth-shaped hole in your life.”
Line Of Best Fit • 8/10
Spin • Album Of The Week
“Ought make indie rock that sounds like how urbanity makes you feel: nervous, antsy, sometimes hostile, yet intoxicatingly vibrant. And Darcy, likewise, gesticulates like a dutiful office drone who’s played by the rules his whole life but just can’t take it anymore. Ought’s 2014 debut More Than Any Other Day, was an album of slowly unfurled epiphanies, stoking simmering tension into fiery, exultant release. Those sort of affirming moments are a little harder to come by on the more chaotic and caustic Sun Coming Down, but the album’s relentless drive and uncompromising attitude constitute their own special kind of thrill. If More Than Any Other Day was about the hard-fought, triumphant ascent, Sun Coming Down is the giddy, daredevil "wheeeeee!" down the other side of the peak.”
Pitchfork • 8.0
“There’s an overwhelming, all-pervading anxiety to Ought… [a] deeply impressive second album. Play this music loud enough, and it can have an almost physical effect, making jaws clench and tendons go taut. That stress-ball intensity was also there on the band’s debut, last year’s More Than Any Other Day. But Sun Coming Down builds on that feeling, showing us a band refining its attack in ways that bands ideally should do on their sophomore albums. Sun Coming Down isn’t some great leap beyond the last album — an album that, after all, is still less than a year and a half old. But it’s sharper and more focused, and also grander and more expansive.”
Stereogum • Album Of The Week
“Sun Coming Down is the very worthy child of More Than Any Other Day. Ought’s brand of schizophrenic, paranoid, patchwork songwriting could well make for an uneasy listen, but with every passage of brutal sonic assault they offer a warm bed of AM hooks, balancing every handful of poison with a batch of antidote. There’s a marked step forward in the deceptive depth of Sun Coming Down, and Ought perhaps traded in some of their debut longplayer’s immediacy in getting it, but their wit and emotional complexity remain stronger than ever..”
Drowned In Sound • 8/10
“It was a refreshing proposition to discover that Constellation Records were releasing a post-punk album full of spiky rhythms and choppy riffs. It was even more pleasing when 2014’s More Than Any Other Day also proved to be one of the best debut albums released that year. The sound of Sun Coming Down is even more economical than their debut. Ought ramble and twitch with greater freedom and intensity, the overall feeling being that of a band that embraces their inherent naturalism and doesn’t fastidiously agonise over retakes and overdubs. With simplicity in its sound, the brilliance of Sun Coming Down lies in the album's pacing. The natural shifting of tempos within and between tracks keeps the record feeling strikingly vital. Sun Coming Down offers plenty of what made More Than Any Other Day so compelling: the terse guitar work; the laconic vocal delivery; the simplicity of sound and style. Ought combine this with added emotional depth. There are no tricks on show here, the sound is refreshingly clean, the ethos is admirably simple, embracing the DIY punk spirit and spitting out a beautiful record that will also fill that Sonic Youth-shaped hole in your life.”
Line Of Best Fit • 8/10
 | More Than Any Other DayOught CD / 180gLP / DL |
CST103
 | Once More With Feeling...Ought 10" / DL |
CST108
• SPIN: #8 Song of 2015 ("Beautiful Blue Sky")
• NORMAN RECORDS: #8 Album of 2015
• LOUD AND QUIET: #13 Album of 2015
• EXCLAIM: #13 Rock Album of 2015
• STEREOGUM: #29 Album of 2015
• POPMATTERS: Top Albums of 2015
• ROUGH TRADE: Top Albums of 2015
• DROWNED IN SOUND: Top Albums of 2015
• PITCHFORK: 8.0 • musicOMH: 5/5 • SPIN: 8/10
• LOUD & QUIET: 8/10 • DROWNED IN SOUND: 8/10
Description
Ought returns with their second full-length album Sun Coming Down, following a break-out year for the Montréal-based rock quartet that saw its 2014 debut More Than Any Other Day make well-deserved waves for its blend of authentic, anxious, controlled and restive energy, with a Best New Music nod from Pitchfork and appearances on a wide range of year-end lists.Having spent most of 2014 on the road vitalizing audiences with no-nonsense post-punk and the feverishly observational testifying of singer/guitarist Tim Darcy (who officially changed his name from Tim Beeler this year), Ought settled into a long harsh Montreal winter hibernation, spending the first few months of 2015 writing, playing the occasional local gig, and eventually heading back to the Hotel2Tango recording studio in the spring to lay down a batch of fresh tunes.
Sun Coming Down maintains the band's tight, twitchy and economical sound, with the unfussy, understated rhythm section of drummer Tim Keen and bassist Ben Stidworthy anchoring Tim Darcy's electric guitar and Matt May's fuzzed-out keys (sounding, as often as not, like a second guitar). Ought pursue an artistically apposite austerity in committing these new songs to tape, referencing the arid and unvarnished production of no-wave and early indie rock while balancing carved-out angularity against an evolving comfort with textural coalescences and measured pacing. It makes for an album that's consistently, insistently propulsive but also feels unhurried and pleasantly unhyped. Songs like "Beautiful Blue Sky" (already a fan favorite from live shows) and "Never Better" unfold with gradual and deliberate ebb and flow, where scratchy guitars play like dappled shards of light on gently roiling waves of bass and organ; "The Combo" and "Celebration" keep things crisp and concise. Darcy's voice and lyrics continue to distinguish and define the personality of the band: his blend of ironic detachment, declarative insistence, fragmentary stammering poetics, and the occasional direct aside to the listener, finds various ways to weave within or drive through the mixes.
Sun Coming Down confirms the distinctive vitality and purposive naturalism of this band; Ought resists facile primitivism and overhyped dynamics in equal measure, keeping things hermetic but never airless, ascetic but never dispassionate, literate but never prolix. The band's steady and subtle charms don't make them the cool kids or the iconoclastic freaks - just a satisfyingly unrefined and substantive rock band that eschews indulgence or aesthetic bandwagoneering to seek a humble, thoughtful corner from which to articulate a position within and contribute meaningfully to a 40-year continuum of indie, punk and DIY tradition.
Thanks for listening.
Release date: 18 September 2015
Running time: 40:24
Packaging notes
CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on thick 24pt. paperboard with a printed CD dust sleeve. LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight jacket with full colour printed dust sleeve on thick uncoated paper, a 12"x20" pull-out poster, and a download card for 320 kbps MP3 copy of the album. Front cover artwork is a detail of the painting Men Of No Art by Chyrum Lambert.Tracklist
1. Men For Miles2. Passionate Turn
3. The Combo
4. Sun's Coming Down
5. Beautiful Blue Sky
6. Celebration
7. On The Line
8. Never Better
Credits
PERSONNELMatt May: Keys, Vocals
Ben Stidworthy: Bass
Tim Keen: Drums, Violin
Tim Darcy: Vocals, Guitar
Recorded by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh at Hotel2Tango in Montreal, QC. Mastered by Harris Newman at Greymarket.
