Suss slow the release weekend down with ambient-country calm on Counting Sunsets

Suss’ Counting Sunsets is a beautiful Sunday recommendation from the 15 May release wave, especially for listeners who need the weekend to exhale. The band’s sound is often described as ambient country, and that phrase does real work. It captures the way Suss use country instrumentation and open-space feeling not to tell a standard road song, but to create a landscape the listener can sit inside.

Pedal steel, piano, slide guitar, autoharp, synths, harmonium, acoustic guitar, tape loops and harmonica all contribute to a sound that feels wide, slow and sunlit at the edges. The title Counting Sunsets is almost too perfect. This is music about transition: light falling, color changing, time moving without drama. In a release weekend full of festival noise, announcements and genre-heavy records, Suss offer stillness as a kind of independent statement. The music does not need a big chorus or an urgent hook because it is working at a different scale. It asks the listener to notice texture, patience and the emotional space between notes. For 17 May, Counting Sunsets is the record to place at the end of the digest: a reminder that indie music can also be a horizon, not only a headline. Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/15-new-albums-you-should-listen-to-now-kevin-morby-drake-smerz-and-more