Sun Reign

By the time they released 2021's Sun Reign, Magic Castles had been making their brand of dream pop-influenced, garage rock-adjacent psychedelic pop for many years. Sun Reign proved to be the most difficult to complete as the band basically imploded, leaving mainstay Jason Edmonds to work on his own. He slowly chipped away at crafting a typically lush and full-sounding album, then suffered a near-fatal accident that derailed the process until he was feeling well enough to continue, which fortunately happened relatively quickly. None of the trauma of the accident or recovery made it into the music, though: Sun Reign is bright and peaceful psych pop, built on guitars that jangle and strum calmly, rhythms that flow like a hidden stream, and vocals that rarely lift above a whisper. These elements are stacked together gently, coated with a few thick dabs of reverb and echo, then set adrift like paper boats to bob along as they wish. There's a peaceful beauty in songs like "Asuras" and "Valle