The Summer of Lost Things

With their eighth studio album, 'Simple Things', The Band of Heathens came home-geographically, as they returned to their longtime base of Austin for the recording; sonically, in an embrace of the rootsy, guitar-based rock with which they made their name; and thematically, with lyrics that speak to appreciating friends and family and our limited time on this planet.

The Sunshine Company's very name summons the spirit of the mini-genre of 1960s pop-rock that, long after its heyday, was named sunshine pop. So does their music, with the requisite exquisite multi-part male-female harmonies, buoyant optimism, and luxuriant late-1960s L.A. studio production. Look a little under the surface, though, and you find tinges of eccentric melancholy that set them apart from many of the frothy Mamas and the Papas-like groups of the period. Just as their music was more multi-dimensional than you might be led to believe by their trio of Top 100 hits, so was their story more complex than many would imagine. Could there have been any other band whose brief career whisked them through the orbits of the Carpenters, the Fifth Dimension, Jackson Browne, the Jefferson Airplane, Mary McCaslin, and John Davidson, ending at the even unlikelier destination of a pre-stardom Gregg Allman?