Album Premiere: Easy Dreams, ‘Sunformer’
The L.A. folk duo-turned-rock band releases their luminous debut full-length on Friday, May 12. Get an exclusive first listen to the whole album here!
Easy Dreams, Sunformer album artwork.
Meredith Meyer and Brandon White’s journey has covered vast distances both geographically and musically. Originally from the South and Midwest, they met by chance at a party in Brooklyn and eventually relocated to Los Angeles. While Meyer’s music experience includes time in the post-punk-influenced group Young Unknowns and White once helmed a genre-straddling rock outfit called Cuss Words, they first bonded over a mutual love of country music.
They both admired the harmonies of the Flying Burrito Brothers in particular and wanted to do a harmony project together. Eventually, they reconnected and Easy Dreams was born. What began as a “simple folk duo” evolved into something much more expansive. With the addition of more band members, Easy Dreams became what they describe as a “collision of psych country, shoegaze rock, and pure ’60s pop.”
The culmination of that physical and musical journey is Sunformer, their debut full-length record, which officially releases this Friday, May 12. Adventures in Americana is privileged to share the album in its entirety a day early.
Easy Dreams. Photo credit: Mike Wilson.
The 11-track album is a collection of rapturous, cathartic and sometimes melancholy sounds and lyrics, a confluence of Easy Dreams’ varied influences. “Sunformer is something the band all dreamed into existence together,” Meyer says. “It’s our weird joyful noise." The album weaves in and out of rock and Americana sounds in a fluid, cohesive flow thanks in part to producer Adam Lasus. "When I met with Easy Dreams, I knew we could capture some magic together,” Lasus says. “The songs just kind of exploded and blossomed in a very natural way."
“Exploded and blossomed” is a perfect description for many moments in Sunformer, like the lush, swelling outro on “All in Blue”; the rapturous harmonies in “Reckless”; and the shimmering guitar reverb on “Zabriskie Point.” While the overall sound lands more in the rock vs. country side of Americana, it ends with the acoustic, bluegrass-inflected “Enough Is Enough.” The pared-back instrumentation allows Meyer and White’s sweet harmonies to take center stage.
The emotion of the vocals, instrumentation and songwriting were heightened by Meyer’s loss of her mother in 2022, which both delayed and informed the production of the album. Meyer’s songwriting had already been heavily influenced by what she went through in the years before her mother’s death as well.
"Some of these songs are wounded. Some hold on tight to hope. Then there’s some that just want to blow the lid off the place,” Meyer says. “All these wild and different songs come together to make Sunformer. On this album, we wanted to kick against hard luck and worldly troubles. But we wanted the songs to be tender and merciful too.”
Listen to Sunformer today!
Album credits
Meredith Meyer (vocals, guitar, keys)
Brandon White (vocals, guitar)
Kenny Kupers (drums)
Pete DiBiasio (bass)
Produced by Adam Lasus
All songs written by Brandon White and Meredith Meyer
Mastered by Joe Lambert
©2023 Easy Dreams Music and Yallbeat Records
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the primary music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley!
