Tomorrow Is Alright

The Sonny in Sonny & the Sunsets is Sonny Smith, and Tomorrow Is Alright represents a small portion of what he's been up to since he started playing music. He broke in as a blues pianist, released a bunch of solo albums in the 2000s, and -- most impressively -- in 2009 he conceived and completed a project called 100 Records, which involved making up fictional bands and singers from all different eras and styles and then writing and recording songs for each of them. The Sunsets were involved in that project too, but first they recorded Tomorrow Is Alright in various locales around San Francisco during 2007 and 2008. It's not surprising that Smith would be able to undertake a project like 100 Records, as Tomorrow shows he's a songwriter willing and ready to try different things with a very high success-to-failure ratio. Whether it's the ramshackle three-chord pop of "Too Young to Burn" that opens the record, the sparse Jonathan Richman-influenced shaggy dog tale "Planet of Women," th