Versailles, the new album by Houston indie band A Sundae Drive is a mesmerizing symphony of palpable emotion. It’s a trip through a hall of mirrors, reflecting the all too familiar, thin, yet stubborn threads that hold us together and tangle us up while simultaneously compelling us to and preventing us from forging a "happily ever after" life with another person, who before we met, was just another stranger. It’s a wonder relationships are able to persevere, that we can ever make them work at all in light of this obvious, but unacknowledged truth. This is a truth that Versailles challenges us to face, if for no other reason than to preserve our peace of mind and reassure us that we are not alone in our own circumstances. Versailles is a reminder that even the most storybook relationships on the surface have their own undercurrent of miscommunication, misunderstanding, mistrust, and misbehavior, sometimes one-sided, sometimes mutual. It’s a truth to be considered, compared, and contrasted against the Facebook facades of those fairy tale relationships of friends and acquaintances who publicly claim to have "married their best friend" and boast in lofty greeting card sentiment and filtered photos of a life of unicorns, rainbows, and perpetual vacation bliss. Versailles is a tightly woven but fluently flowing tormented composition that unravels this Hollywood illusion of an unblemished, Utopian romance that we’re promised as kids and even more aggressively marketed as adults. The album exposes the fragile nature of the human condition, human interaction, flawed individuals, and imperfect relationships where the best-case scenario for everyone involved is a draw. The allure of Versailles, as with all A Sundae Drive albums, is that it captivates you from the first note and holds you captive to the last like a lingering dream, with its lulling, hazy sound, structure, and flow. It reels you in to a place where you, along with the album’s characters can attempt to make sense out of a complicated, chaotic world. It’s a familiar place, not a frightening one. Despite the thematic, recurring interpersonal tension and conflicts the album reflects, the songs on Versailles dance together, hand in hand, arm in arm, cheek to cheek in a dream world of the collective subconscious. Although any and every song on Versailles has the strength and courage to dance alone, like the individual relationship scenarios they depict and like the band members behind the album, they fit together to form a larger more complete and truer interconnected picture. It is for this reason; this album demands to be listened to in one sitting from start to finish and then start to finish again and again to truly feel the magnificence of this portrait A Sundae Drive has so intricately drawn. However, Versailles is much bigger than a portrait. It’s an epic musical opus of the struggle to find happiness with another person and with yourself. It’s about the choices, good or bad you both make in pursuit of these often incompatible ends. It’s also about the resulting consequences of the actions of everyone involved and how you react to them and move forward or stay in one place.
Versailles begins with Hall of Fame and a slow, steady heart beat thump of bass, a cautious but determined return to the early phase of the relationship. It’s a rear-view mirror "we’ll always have Paris" glance back to a time when a life together was still glorious, strong, and full of promise. Zeek García's wistful vocals and gentle guitar gradually emerge, reminiscing fondly of that moment in the relationship when the sun was shining, all was bright, "and all was well in that." This brief yearning abruptly ends, leaving the scant words of the song hanging in the air only to be swept away in a celebratory flurry of guitar and percussion in a triumphant, orchestral memorial to that moment in time before the impending obstacles and challenges characteristic of all relationships were visible or maybe just unrecognizable on the horizon - the ideal Facebook post. This opening bookend of Hall of Fame introduces us to one of the major protagonists of Versailles - the instrumentation, which becomes a character in itself, building and anchoring the overall mood and tone of the album’s narrative when words can’t do it alone. This is not to say that any of the lyrics on Versailles fall short. A Sundae Drive has always demonstrated a literary appreciation and expertise for words and phrases, creating subtle but poignant lyrics that will knock the wind out of you and always leave a mark.
The luster of the relationship begins to fade as the nostalgic trip back in Hall of Fame spills ahead in time with Fly South, where circumstances of the relationship seem to have transformed from a romantic ideal to a realistic one as unconditional love becomes conditional with the passage of time. Bassist Jennifer Gray-García, who has one of the most underappreciated and physically and emotionally expressive musical voices around, laments the reality of a relationship that has devolved into one lacking in attentiveness, honesty, and self-control. You can hear the torrent of emotions in García’s voice as the narrative of Versailles unfolds even in a supporting role with In Threes. Her delicate, heart wrenching backup "OOOH OOHS" to Sergio Cano’s dominant, but melancholy assessment of the state of the troubled relationship reminds us that there are two voices in every relationship that need to be heard, but often are not. Her voice takes an even more commandeering presence in Boxing Day, Beware the Cages, and Stubborn as we stumble along the bumpy trajectory of the relationship. García’s voice accompanies us on this journey, shifting seamlessly between damaged vulnerability, suppressed fury, cornered aggression, consoling lullaby, and triumphant resignation. It's a voice that can send a shiver up your spine one moment and grab your heart and throttle it the next and still leave you demanding more.
This relationship path culminates at the end of Versailles with Stubborn, a song that kicks your heart in the groin and revels at the sight of you doubled over and incapacitated as the preceding tracks, which instigated it all, gather around, eager to join in the melee and leave you for dead. Stubborn is the operatic closing bookend to Versailles, mirroring the composition and spirit of the opening bookend of the album. It completes the cycle of a relationship, the cycle of life as so many are all too familiar. It begins as a subdued, sullen accusation and a confessional of the latest transgressions weighing on the stability of the relationship we became acquainted with in Hall of Fame. Forgiveness is solicited, apologies are offered, and promises are made that these lapses will never happen again. "I’ll do better next time. I swear it won’t happen again. I promise." But it’s evident these are empty vows when they are followed by "But if next time happens too soon…" Stubborn reveals that this anguished reality of a troubled relationship has become a somber "Ground Hog Day" loop in which the album’s protagonists have grudgingly accepted to live and "do it all again, over and over." García broodingly resigns herself to this outcome by reassuring herself that "It doesn’t matter in the long run," because "we all go back to zero" with the start of each day where we can hope for a different and better result. However, because we are such a stubborn species, we don’t learn our lesson, and we continue to make the same mistakes as we engage in this constant battle, pursing this impossible endeavor to get it right and if not win in some small way, at least tie the score.
Versailles ends with a painful but essential epiphany with Jennifer Grey-García’s hauntingly surreal realization and concession that this perpetual battle to make relationships work, "to love and be loved in return" is both the scariest and bravest thing we can do in life. We never know what we are entering into with relationships, but we understand it’s something we need to do because the terrifying alternative is living alone and dying alone. As this unavoidable truth sinks in and resonates, an orchestral eruption of guitar, percussion, and strings emphasizes the magnificence of this revelation. Mike Medina adds his succession of exclamation point closing drum beats to stress its finality, which is followed by deliberate, lingering guitar and synthesizer distortion and feedback, serving as a reminder of the relationship chaos that brought us here and as a musical ellipsis underscoring that the struggle continues and we’ll inevitably do it all again.
In that spirit, and to get the full effect of Versailles, listen to it on a device that allows continuous play. Let it flow naturally back into Hall of Fame after the final track ends. Go back to zero and listen to the album over and over again, and all will be well in that.
Versailles will be released on April 1. You can see A Sundae Drive play live at their CD release show in Houston on April 1 at White Oak Music Hall. You can get your copy of Versailles on Bandcamp, Spotify, and iTunes.
A Sundae Drive is Zeek García (guitar and vocals) Jennifer Gray-García (bass, keys, and vocals) Sergio Cano (guitar and vocals) Mike Medina (drums). You can visit A Sundae Drive on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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