Album Review | 'After Sunrise' 

[
      {
        "name": "500x250 Ad",
        "insertPoint": "5",
        "component": "15667920",
        "parentWrapperClass": "",
        "requiredCountToDisplay": "1"
      }
    ]

Rochester native and harp-toting singer-songwriter Mikaela Davis has really found a niche for herself in the jam band-adjacent world of psychedelic folk-rock. Songs such as “Get Gone” and “Little Bird” from the Laurel Canyon nostalgia trip and 2018 full-length album “Delivery” hinted at the retro sound she would fully embrace on the collection “And Southern Star” last year.

On the April 5 EP “After Sunrise,” Davis continues her new partnership with the independent label Kill Rock Stars — as well as her collaboration with the trippy Los Angeles rock band Circles Around the Sun, which they began with the title track from the group’s 2023 album “Language.”

As the title suggests, “After Sunrise” is a warm-weather bliss-out session that encourages listeners to get lost in the music and transports them to an elysian state. Free from the distractions that lyrics sometimes pose, the music is entirely instrumental — save for Davis singing “la la la” on the title track, a faithful cover of the Sérgio Mendes tune from 1972.

From a timbre perspective, the plucked strings of Davis’s harp are so distinctive from the crunchiness of John Lee Shannon’s guitar and the haze coming off Adam MacDougall’s keyboards that they cut through the smoky texture with crystalline precision, particularly on the song “Moonbow.”

This dynamic is also present on the laidback pop-funk opener “Gloaming Way,” which is nearly twice as long as the single version Davis and the band previously released.

The four-song collection closes with a live version of “Language,” which sounds as if the indie pop band MGMT got lost in a disco fever dream. The synths are somehow both seductive and quirky, with Davis’s harp glissandi casting a spell over the proceedings.
“After Sunrise” — released digitally via Kill Rock Stars and on vinyl courtesy of Jealous Butcher Records — is a rejuvenating reminder of Davis’s captivating skills as an instrumentalist in addition to her ability as an effective singer-songwriter. Here’s hoping we hear more from her and Circles Around the Sun in the future.

Daniel J. Kushner is an arts writer at CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].