Smiling can be contagious. Just ask AV Super Sunshine. The new single “Smile” is one grooving’ mix of meandering keyboard juices and pop/rock twisted guitar tones. Listeners that love to jam to 60/70s flavored music will surely dig the righteous beat and head bopping fun found in “Smile”.
AV Super Sunshine is from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. They have accrued an impressive string of international hits, including the No. 1 Top 60 Dance Club DJ Chart for 2019’s “Are You Happy”. Other hits include “Candyland”, “Apple”, “Time Bomb” and “I Am Alien”. Normally I’m a little perplexed why bands or musicians don’t add a lot of details to their Facebook biography or about me section, but in this case, it’s actually ideal to know less about the people behind the song. I like that mystery. It also gave me a clearer pallet to digest the music without any bias or hang ups.
REVERBNATION: https://www.reverbnation.com/AVSuperSunshine
“Won’t you smile with me, a great big smile, then we all can see my baby’s smile” is the easy-to-like chorus. It’s also a great sing-along. That’s what makes “Smile” so great is that you find yourself humming alongside it immediately. After a few listens, it’s like going from a jog to a runner’s high. You just feel ensconced in the bass line, the pitter-patter percussion. The arrangement is so mellow, but at the same time, a bit of a fire-starter. It gets you smiling. There’s something special about this song that feels like it’s been dipped in both sunshine and intricate arrangement.
The male voice in “Smile” is laid back. His voice is like Perry Farrell meets Lenny Kravitz meets Shannon Hoon (Blind Melon). As a listener, you fall under the dreamy spell, gripping the little nuances of his voice meshed with pop sounding riffs. He almost seems to talk-sing at times, draping the words with a tinge of brevity.
The “Smile” music video is a surreal comment on the power of smiling amongst each other. Mannequins are placed in a restaurant, that seems to be vacant minus a member of AV Super Sunshine and the doll. The camera goes back and forth to give the viewer guesswork if the human is real, or if the mannequin doll is real. Lots of cuts and transitions that feature the camera operators. By the end, the mannequin dolls are made to be near carbon copies of the band itself.
Overall, I preferred the song to the video. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty imaginative video, but I just wanted to listen to the song, eyes closed and be lost in dream land. I felt very connected to the song when I just stopped everything and almost meditated to it. It’s so hard to do that – remember when you would get a record and just have to physically sit there and have to flip the record, or turn the tape deck to side two or side B? It makes you smile, doesn’t it? “Smile” leaves you in the moment and doesn’t look back.
Jamie Morse