Since Jim O?Rourke has decided not to further pursue the pop road he had been on with his trilogy of albums (+ one EP) on Drag City Records, it?s on bands like Sun to fill the gap. Sun is the duo of Chris Townend and Oren Ambarchi from Australia. Ambarchi is usually known for anything from slow and minimal to (more recently) sludgy and doomed, but not for pop music. That he?s a very versatile musician was known though, and that way it doesn?t come as a surprise that he?s also able to play the kind of music contained on an album like ?I?ll be the Same?.

His compagnon in Sun, Chris Townend, is usually known as the sound engineer and mastering artist of choice for Oren Ambarchi, but also plays music himself. ?I?ll be the Same? is the successor to 2001?s self titled album which originally came out on Preservation Records and was reissued on Staubgold with additional remixes in 2003. The differences between the two albums are not vast, but that means that also the high quality of the first release has stayed the same.

In a way, their style of pop music is really quite similar to Jim O?Rourke?s pop albums on Drag City, if not as heart-warming as for example anything on ?Eureka?. If Sun had hits like ?Prelude To 110 Or 220 / Women Of The World?, this would have been a candidate to be my personal favorite of 2007. Still, they have some really good songs. Only six have found their way onto the CD, clocking in just over 30 minutes, which is quite a good length for the album. The small amount of songs also gives them room to expand the instrumental passages and explore the depth of each song. 7/10 -- Stephan Bauer (14 November, 2007)