Sweetheart of the Sun


Sweetheart of the Sun is the fifth studio album by American pop rock band the Bangles, released on September 27, 2011. It is the band's second album since their 2003 reunion, and their only one that does not feature an official bassist, as Michael Steele left the band in 2005. The group hired several session musicians for bass guitar accompaniment for the album. The twelve-song album was co-produced by the Bangles and Matthew Sweet.

Background

Sweetheart of the Sun is only the fifth full-length studio album by the Bangles since the band's inception thirty years earlier. It came eight years after their initial reunion album, Doll Revolution. That record had been followed by an extensive concert tour after which bassist Michael Steele left the group, and a lengthy period of readjustment ensued. The remaining trio tried out new bassists and toured sporadically. Eventually they focused on making a new album on their own – the process would take about two years to complete.
Susanna Hoffs attributed the long process to parenting and family responsibilities. In an interview she said:
The album's name comes from the song "Anna Lee ", which was inspired by the book Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller. The triple biography tells the intertwined stories of the Laurel Canyon-based singer-songwriters Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. The book had a deep impact on Hoffs, and she passed it along to Vicki and Debbi Peterson, who also loved it. The song conveys the influence these musicians had on the Bangles, both in their music and as role models of independent feminist women.
The song's opening lines – "Got a picture of you sittin', In the kitchen without a stitch on, Beautiful and natural as can be" – were inspired by a particular passage in the book. Hoffs explained:

Compositions

Of the album's twelve songs, ten are original compositions by some combination of the three band members ; three songs are credited to the full trio itself. In addition to new material expressly written for the album, some of the songs were selected from a trove of unrecorded songs stretching back many years; a few date back as far as the early 1990s. The album's two cover songs date back even farther, to the 1960s: "Sweet and Tender Romance" is a reworking of a 1964 single by the UK girl group the McKinleys, itself a cover of the 1963 single by Carter-Lewis and the Southerners; while "Open My Eyes" comes from Todd Rundgren's early psychedelic band, the Nazz.

Releases

The album was officially released on September 27, 2011. An expanded version of the album was released exclusively through Barnes & Noble stores and included acoustic versions of "Through Your Eyes" and "What a Life" as bonus tracks. Two singles, "I'll Never Be Through with You" and "Anna Lee ", were also released to help promote the record. An acoustic studio version of "Hazy Shade of Winter" and "Let It Go" were included on the 7-inch single of "Anna Lee ".

Reception

Sweetheart of the Sun was seen by many critics as a successful reinvention of the Bangles' early musical style – "a beautifully sustained salute to 1960s-inspired pop". "With nods to the past but no wallowing in it," opined No Depression reviewer Julie Wenger Watson, the album "highlights their considerable skills as musicians, vocalists and songwriters." Writing in The New York Times, music critic Jon Caramanica remarked that much of the album feels "like mature takes on youthful ideas" and harkens back to the Bangles EP of 1982 and the band's earliest days. Similarly, Steve Pick of Blurt stated that "it sounds remarkably like what we might have expected a follow-up to All Over the Place to be".
Addressing the album purely on its own terms, Fresh Airs music critic Ken Tucker gave it a wholly favorable review, saying: "The greatest accomplishment of this new album is that it's never necessary to have heard a single Bangles song before right now to appreciate the craft and cleverness of the music they're making. Good pop-rock conquers all time and space."

Personnel

The band's musical credits are described in the album's liner notes:
The Bangles
Additional musicians
Production