''Fiction'' is an

extended play An extended play (EP) is a Sound recording and reproduction, musical recording that contains more tracks than a Single (music), single but fewer than an album. Contemporary EPs generally contain up to eight tracks and have a playing time of 1 ...

by the Canadian rock band

Suuns Suuns () is a Canadian rock music, rock band from Montreal. It was formed in mid-2007 when vocalist and guitarist Ben Shemie and guitarist and bassist Joe Yarmush got together to make some beats which quickly evolved into a few songs. The duo w ...

, released October 30, 2020 via

Secret City Records Secret City Records is a Canadian independent record label based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The music label was founded in 2006 by Andrew Rose and Justin West, originally as sublabel of Justin Time Records. It became fully independent in late ...

and

Joyful Noise Recordings Joyful Noise Recordings is an independent record label with headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. The label was founded in 2003 in Bloomington, Indiana by Karl Hofstetter, who also played drums on several of the label's first releases. Joyful N ...

Background

''Fiction'' was announced September 2020 with a press release promising "new sounds and sonic directions" on an EP that "is as much a project of curation as it is one of creation: sifting, re-imagining, and re-framing, sometimes completely disassembling and then building from the ground up." The announcement came with the release of lead single "Pray", a leftover song cut from the band's 2016 album '' Hold/Still''. Two more singles followed in the next month: "Breathe", featuring prior collaborators Jerusalem in My Heart, and title track "Fiction", came out October 7 and October 22 respectively.

Style

The album has been described as

avant rock Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, wit ...

and

psychedelic music Psychedelic music (sometimes called psychedelia) is a wide range of popular music styles and genres influenced by 1960s psychedelia, a subculture of people who used psychedelic drugs such as Dmt, DMT, Lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD, mescaline, ...

Critical reception

For ''Exclaim!'', Daniel Sylvester wrote of the EP, "Although ''Fiction'' feels and sounds like more of an experiment than it does an important part of their discography, there's no way to deny that these six tracks demonstrate Suuns' willingness to mess with the way they approach their craft, giving the listener a beacon of hope for future works." ''Pitchfork's'' Will Ainsley said that despite it being brief, the EP "never feels insubstantial because the sound of the whole thing is so spectacular", and called the project "something more instinctive and assured" than the band's past output, but also that "it's tempting to want ''more'', more clearly-defined songs, more beats, more aggression, more of that sublime ''bweebeebewboo'' guitar line; there are only two straight-up-and-down songs here while the rest feel like sketches." ''New Noise'' writer Ryan Beitler said the band "are breaking barriers and reaching beyond the underground in the process." Laura Stewart of ''25YL'' called the project "joyfully chilling", and called the opening track "black ambience with shades of Bowie's ''Black Star'' ".

Track listing

References

{{Suuns 2020 EPs EPs by Canadian artists Suuns albums Secret City Records albums Joyful Noise Recordings albums Experimental rock EPs Psychedelic music EPs