FROM DAWN TO DUSK

After a bright start with his band Silver Sun’s debut album, followed by more records filled with sparkling power pop, in 2020 James Broad gave us his final masterpiece.

As new dawns go, Silver Sun flooded in. When their lush, soothing, multi-vocal-harmonied intro to Lava erupted into a frenzy of guitars and falsetto rock squeals, it was like the curtains snapping open on a supernova. The post-peak death throes of Britpop often deserved their inauspicious reputation; here lay innumerable bad Oasis-copyist major-label cash-in merchants. But among them were some truly great acts: Super Furry Animals, Ash, Mansun and London’s Silver Sun,whose debut album ranked alongside the very best of the decade. Their singer, James Broad, died in October from cancer.

Announcing their arrival with the selfaggrandising punk assault of There Will Never Be

Another Me from their debut Sun..! EP, Silver Sun marked a vibrant swerve for Britpop. As indebted to the emo rock of Weezer, the classic rock’n’roll of Buddy Holly, the power pop of Cheap Trick and The Beach Boys’ lustrous harmonies as they were to Supergrass or Ash, they represented the Britpop era reaching out across the Atlantic every bit as boldly as Blur’s grunge-influenced self-titled album of 1997. That same year, their debut album Silver Sun arrived, adorned with B-movie poster artwork and sounding like a time-travelling DeLorean scorching across a 1950s American drive-in.

From the chrome-plated, fuel-injected guitarpop charges of Golden Skin and Last Day to joyous retro swingers like Julia and cheese-free power ballads Far Out, Yellow Light and showstopper Nobody, the record was virtually faultless, a shining beacon of melodic excellence in a British rock scene becoming increasingly formulaic and cannibalistic. That such impeccable melodies came attached to some of the most cartoonish and surreal lyrics of the age – sneaking the line ‘bull’s blood for baby Jesus’ into the charts on Lava, and making a piano ballad about animals trampling on drugs (Animal’s Feet) far more moving than it deserved to be – only made the record feel as notof-this-planet as the monster beetle on its sleeve.

Silver Sun made several dents in the charts, hitting No.30 and sending Golden Skin and Lava into the Top 40, although their biggest hits came the following year with their sleek cover of Johnny Vallins’s Too Much, Too Little, Too Late and ballroom blitzer I’ll See You Around. Second album Neo Wave, however, despite some wonderful moments such as Scared,There Goes Summer and Mustard, leaned a little too heavily on Cheap Trick’s glam rock, lacked the debut’s effervescent crispness and saw the band enter a seven-year hiatus.

However, they remained a close-knit family with effortless chemistry. In 2002, as an avid fan and friend of the band, I talked James, bassist Richard Buckton and guitarist Paul Smith into re-forming to play in my back garden for my thirtieth birthday party, the first time they’d played together in several years. After just an hour’s rehearsal in my bedroom their harmonic magic clicked like they’d never set foot off tour.

The following year they played sporadic shows, and in 2005 Broad recorded a third Silver Sun album, Disappear Here. Despite him playing all of the instruments himself (his bandmates reunited again for the accompanying gigs), the album bristled with the raucous rock’n’roll momentum of their debut on tracks such as Bubblegum and Lies, and delved into electronica on the single Immediate. An equally mighty full-band album, Dad’s Weird Dream, followed in 2006, adding traces of psychedelia, ska and Pinkerton grunge to their power-pop mix. After that, bar 2013 album A Lick And A Promise, compiling Silver Sun tracks Broad had recorded over the previous decade, little more was heard of the Britpop Beach Boys.

Activity recommenced in recent years. In 2017 I caught up with the band, in great spirits after a comeback gig at Islington Academy. A sixth album, Switzerland, again recorded entirely by Broad, was released early in 2020. Further exploring the grungier elements of Dad’s Weird Dream, it showed no sign of deterioration in his melodic mastery – nor his encroaching illness.

Just weeks before his death in October 2020, fans were shocked to read ex-Kerrang! editor James McMahon’s interview with Broad, for his personal website, in which he revealed he was battling terminal cancer. “I probably have about four years max left, unless someone comes up with something pretty impressive soon to fix me up,” he said. “I am learning to live with that fact… I don’t really worry about myself as such. It’s hard to worry about something you really don’t have any control over… I try and stay pretty positive.”

Positivity, after all, was James Broad’s musical forte; every gig a celebration, every song a punch at the stars. For many of us, his music opened the door and let the light in.