BestNewBands.com

Call me ignorant, but for some reason I don’t usually connect Mobile, Alabama with psychadelia—especially psychedelic rock. However, this might change thanks to The Sunshine Factory.  We have before us a dynamic trio somehow creating a simultaneously different and accessible sound, thanks to fuzzy guitars, screaming guitars, and a balance of haunting vocals.  I guarantee that within 5 seconds of watching this video you will be hooked by the blaring guitar riff and insuppressible desire to move.

CG: Who’s who? What are your names and what instruments do you play?

Ian Taylor: Guitar, vocals, producer

Mathew Hendrich: Drums, accordian

Sally Robertson: Bass guitar, vocals

CG: Where did you grow up? How did the band come together?

IT: [I’m from] Oklahoma, grew up in St.Petersburg, Florida

SR: Mobile, Alambama always.

MH: [I'm from] Mobile, Alabama  We all met in Mobile, Alabama where we live now! A little story about Ian being from Oklahoma: He slept on Mark Coyne’s (Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips’ brother and originally the singer for the band) bed when he was a baby! They were friends of his Ian’s dad. Maybe something rubbed off? I mean on them of course [laughs].

CG: Who are some of your biggest musical influences?

IT: Allison Krauss, eastern orthodox chant, early nineties music. Lots of things really.

SR: The Beatles, and my brother Neill who is a great musician in a band called The Blackjacks.

MH: Southern rock really I have to say, and now it evolves all the time I hear new stuff all the time that I feel is shaping my musical world.

CG: Did growing up where you did influence your music at all?

IT: Most definitely. All of us feel that Mobile is a wonderful place to write music. If you have never been here, it is a really mystical place rather like New Orleans but with more southern charm. We are only 1.5 hours from New Orleans and right on the Gulf of Mexico. You probably heard of our fair city during the recent deep water horizon oil spill. We were not affected very much by the oil itself. Just money matters.

CG: What bands do you think you sound like, if any?  What bands have others told you you sound like?  Any strange or incongruent comparisons?

IT: We feel we sound a lot like a lot of bands and none of them at the same [time]. We of course always get the My Bloody Valentine comparison because of the tremolo bendy guitar thing, but really we are proud to be even talked about in the same sentence—they are amazing. In a song like “Don’t Fall Asleep” (one off our album, Sugar), you hear that shoegaze sound. Then in a very heavy, trippy song like “Head Becomes the Tomb,” there is a dub base beat and psych rock with the bends just twisting the song but not being the formative part of it.

CG: What do you think you would be doing right now if you weren’t a musician? What did you want to be when you were a kid?

IT: I have no idea. I never think about anything else, really [laughs]

MH: A fireman, I guess. I wanted to be a cowboy when I was a kid.

SR: Well I love graphic art and drawing as well as photography, but my passion is music and basically that is all I ever want to do!

CG: What has been a personal high and a personal low about your musical career so far? Any particular moments of awesomeness or embarrassing blunders?

IT: A high for the band has probably been the release of Sugar and everything that has happened since. A low: A show in Georgia where we ended up playing at a revival center of some sort, and Matt had a tambourine thrown at him by a drunk member of another band [laughs].

CG: So what’s the story behind your band name?

IT: It came from a song by a band called Fragile.

SR: Ian chose it. He was originally a one man band!

CG: What is next for the band?

MH: We are heading off on a tour of Florida, then Texas, and finally in April up to NYC for a showcase for (cross your fingers) Townie Records and possibly Kanine records.  We do have a secret concoction brewing for our next album. We are super excited about it. It is a hybrid of what we already do plus some new elements that we are sure the fans who love us now will be thrilled with.

If were hoping for plucky banjo music from Mobile, Alabama, you have certainly come to the wrong place.  If you’re willing to swap your hopes for reeling whines and hypnotizing rock, then congratulations, you have come to the right place, both literally and figuratively.  Welcome to the Sunshine Factory.