Sticking to what Jungle perceives as a winning formula is the death knell for Sunshine. They are not as busy earning as they once were and, with time on their hands, could’ve cobbled together a new experience on their fifth album. But why challenge comfort if you can afford to not? A daring question answered by Sunshine, the catchy riffs not as enchanting as they were a decade ago. You need to give audiences a new reason to tune in. Whether they like it or not, no listener can truly be satisfied or content with hearing the same sound time after time. The greats have all moved on from giving an audience what they think they want, from Arctic Monkeys to Bob Dylan. Jungle is yet to learn from the best in the business and, as a result, provides eleven reasonable yet unremarkable songs. You’ll not have missed all that much in the way of progress if your last experience of Jungle was their self-titled debut. A few nice beats here or there, though not much difference.
Sunshine is by no means a lesser experience because of this familiarity. There’s a wonderful richness to the instrumental work the whole way through Sunshine. Opening song Come Back to Me is romance simplified to a predictable but enjoyable pattern. Those who find themselves stumped by the need to make a choice will find much comfort in this song, where the paralysis of making a tough call becomes the centre of the song. You’ll hardly notice the transition from Come Back to Me to Sunshine. Sonically separate, but identical in message. They’re never playing fast and loose with the message at hand. It’ll come across as obvious, but an in-your-face style of writing doesn’t hurt if the message feels sincere. Sunshine struggles here. A lazy and often plodding instrumental beat that you’ll find hundreds of Londoners two-stepping to at next year’s All Points East, and floaty vocal work that Jungle believes will directly translate to lucid thoughts on the topic of love.
Jungle sound hellbent on creating an overarching groove across Sunshine and, in turn, forgets to load it with just about anything else of interest. A fascinatingly passive piece of work is what Sunshine becomes by the time Romeo II rolls around. Not so much a song as an attempt at creating a vibe without a specific notion for tone in mind. Carry On busts out an acoustic guitar, out of nowhere, like the most insufferable man at a house party you were feeling half-hearted about attending already. Replaceable music made with the background in mind, and how disappointing it is to hear. They’ve either lost the energy they had for concocting beats of interest or have accepted they’re incapable of writing a better song than their biggest hit. Either way, a defeatist attitude dominates Sunshine. It’s not even that the album picks up at any point either, with Someday, Somewhere a sole highlight after the first song. Just a relatively lacklustre listening experience, and it feels as though that’s the point.
Not one moment of Sunshine is going to stand out all that much. Even if the instrumental similarities can be ignored for a moment, you’re left with relatively tepid explorations of lost love. There’s not much going on aside from that and an occasionally weak metaphor for the mistakes made. Wrong directions, echoed fears and backing vocal interjections leave a lot to be desired. And then it ends. Suddenly. There’s no fanfare about it, no climax found throughout or a signal that this is the end of the album. You could loop Sunshine and not notice that final song, Heavy on My Soul, is light on the details. Repetitive and strained in equal measure, where saying the title and having it feed into this position of love and animosity is meant to be enough. It’s far from enough, though, and Jungle struggles to offer any sort of thrill or interest here.
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