Zella Day has released her sophomore album Sunday In Heaven, in which she showcases her wide-ranging sound with a tracklist that will at times make you dance while tugging at your heartstrings like a good Disco track should, and at other times making you crave the familiar, crisp air you feel when you disengage in the countryside and only Folk music feels right, all while maintaining a Pop sensibility at its core.
Overall, I think I give this album a dig it. It kept me engaged to play it all the way through – on headphones and in the car, and sometimes that’s all I need to know.
Check out our top 5 tracks on the new Zella Day album, Sunday In Heaven, below.
“Mushroom Punch”
Like all good albums, you lead with one of your strongest songs and that’s what you get with the cheekily-titled “Mushroom Punch.” Love the dynamic of the delicate vocals for the verses, the cartoon-like pre-chorus, and then the impassioned delivery for the chorus. If you’re going through it, and you’re in one of those relationships where you’re going through it a lot more than you’re willing to admit to your friends and loved ones, this is the kind of song you’ll cry-sing to with your car parked in the driveway. The end plays well with the fading groovy psychedelia.
“Am I Still Your Baby”
The second track on the album keeps the energy bumping with a 90s Alternative Pop feel of a song. It’s kind of campy in a way that it can be used in those montage scenes in movies depicting breakups where there’s no dialogue and the characters are struggling with life post – but there’s still hope for reconciliation.
“Dance For Love”
I really enjoy the Disco feel to this song. The bass groove is dope and the vocals are bouncy, combining those elements with all of the other instrumentation paints a collage of colors for me feel nostalgic for roller rinks and flared hair in such a specific way. I also quite like how that gives way to twinkling production for the chorus. When she hits the eponymous “I just wanna dance for love” lines you can tell Day is really feeling herself in the studio. It boasts that genuinely feel-good quality that gets your head swaying and your shoulders shimmying.
“Golden”
The mixing for this song is everything for me. The downbeat Disco sound works particularly well as it’s positioned in the middle of the album. The chorus is bright and light with effective minimalist lyrics: “Shine, shine/Can you dig it? Can you dig it?” Everything complements each other so well, from the jangly guitars and funky bass to the catchy hook with layered vocals. That shimmering outro “I don’t want to be a man/I don’t want to be a woman/I just want to be a golden (like a woman)” is delectable in how it pays tribute faithfully to how songs in the 70s left you with such quotable half-sung lyrics. I can see it working well in the first quarter of a live set, when artists start ramping things up. While the guitar and bass work has been the shining standouts on this album, on this song it’s the synths that earn the spotlight
“Almost good”
This song shines for its persistent buildup. The marching band drums and guitar strums that follow the acoustic guitar at the start help accent lyric after lyric “I’ll always regret how long I stayed/we could have kept a love that was almost good” stings in the most beautiful way if you are familiar with the kind of relationship that was nearly enough to make you want to settle, but never truly satisfying to make you want to keep it alive. Put this in that “you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone” playlist that distracts you from actually moving on.
