Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
Last month, Philly dance-punk outfit Sunday Evening Drive went on a weekender south of here, through Virginia. Their first gig was a basement show. There was a pole right in the middle of a full room, and the four members of SED were packed into a corner. From the ceiling hung a balloon that frontperson Jon Furson kept bumping into. He says, “20 by 30 feet in the basement and not a single spot open. But the crowd didn’t stop moving the entire time. It’s twenty 21 year olds for this basement show. The next night we played a venue show to a room of friends of ours… it wasn’t a bad time, but at the house show, they were going nuts. I want them to have something that makes them engaged in a moment, not just something to pass the time.”
I knew from our friend Daniel Sohn, who plays in both my band and Jon’s, that Sunday Evening Drive had begun with the intention of breaking the four-piece guitar-driven indie rock band mold. Jon had done that gig before, and he laughs, “At the house party, we were the vibe killer.” Sunday Evening Drive is his bid at live performance house music for the punks. “We work best in a basement,” Jon says as he sets his drink down, where “no one can pretend they’re not there. We’re all in this moment together.”
Jon had suggested we meet at Charlie was a sinner., a swanky craft cocktail bar in Center City that outlived the onslaught of trendy drink spots in the 2010s. I have two perfectly bitter drinks in rocks glasses, and Jon gets a punch followed by an espresso martini. He is wearing a denim chore coat with metal dog leash clips, which I immediately compliment, and I am in my journalist drag: graphic print pencil skirt, kitten heels, black blouse. We’re getting to the end of the interview, and the bar’s only getting louder. Everything smells like rosemary and each table is punctuated by chic, small chandeliers hanging above. We’ve been chatting for well over an hour when he says, “Wait, did I talk about Madonna? I would be nothing without Madonna.”
Sunday Evening Drive’s first full-length LP, This Is It, blends catchy melodies and presses on synth tones until they shatter into something new. It’s disarmingly fun given Jon’s work ethic underlying his pop melodies: Charli XCX beats on “2022” sung by Jon’s girlfriend—and electropop band Twin Princess frontwoman—Pauli Mia, her voice becoming a pad to launch the sweet and effervescent the new wave anthem “Are You Singing”; the live set staples “Don’t Look Back” and “You’d Never Say Goodbye,” each with LCD Soundsystem stamina and Jon’s best baritone. He says learning how to sing correctly was essential for this record: “I used to blow out my voice trying to sing like Bruce [Springsteen]” and then, “These songs are like if Bruce was singing Rush produced by Kate Bush and Genesis.” At SED live shows, there’s a barreling momentum—Sohn furiously playing bass with a wide-legged stance, Jared Marxuach double-fisting an extensive set-up on keys, and Baxter Hurst-Blair grinning the entire time he’s drumming. Jon towers front and center in his suit and Converse sneakers, belting, reaching out, head tilted. “The decision to wear the suit… There’s something I’m taking more seriously about this. The first show after the pandemic I wore the suit, and I thought, that looks like how I want this image to be.”
Jon Furson is this necessary part of the fabric of Philly’s DIY scene—he’s filled in for my project, for Mannequin Pussy-esque melodic punk Bren, Philly pop fixture Kississippi, and local indie rock legends Puppy Angst, and he is a member of cinematic indie band Fullscreen, the rising stars who dropped their newest LP Highway Hypnosis just this summer. Sunday Evening Drive has been playing consistent gigs without releasing an album for years, and Jon says he was able to finish this record because of the support of all these friends he’s worked with on other projects. He takes the ethos of DIY seriously. How can you make something not for the commercial industry, but with the people you admire most, with your friends, that does something different? How do you take care of one another in that process? He moved to Philly for its people after he finished his undergraduate degree in Harrisonburg, Virginia, closing out his tenure as an organizer for beloved underground music fest MACROCK. In addition to independently releasing This Is It on October 27th, Jon is putting together a compilation of unreleased demos from bands across Philly to fundraise for people on the ground in Palestine. “This small thing with our art can make some change and inspire people to do more.”
On “LinkedIn,” the music video for which was filmed at a West Philly house party, Jon sings, “I don’t want to / Spend a moment / Working overtime / I don’t want to / Put a day job / Over my life.” We talk about the aesthetics of punk having become commercial, and Jon emphasizes that he wants to infuse his music with his real values. About the scene he came up in, Jon says, “It was like, you can do this. You don’t have to be afraid. You can be confident in the way you do things,” Jon says. “Everyone was trying to break the bounds of DIY music. [I thought] you can bring pop to punk music.” I see more and more why he couldn’t leave without talking about Madonna; she’s a chameleon, she wasn’t afraid of controversy, and she is, of course, the queen of pop. It should be noted Jon also schooled me on the history of disco and how it had a direct line to house music and to indie rock, citing bands like New Order and Talking Heads. He turned to the production of songs by KC & the Sunshine Band and Nile Rogers for inspiration for This Is It in addition to looking to local bands: the classic New Jersey punk of Latchkey Kids, the shoegaze of TAGABOW, the “real punks” in Friend, indie band Knifeplay, and the “breakcore” Feeble Little Horse production of Full Body 2. He said when he first heard Fullscreen, it was the closest thing to the music he had been making for SED. Now they write for each other.
“Runaway” is a standout on the album, Fullscreen’s Kirby Vitek leading the song with oscillating, high end vocals, giving way to harmonies with Jon in the chorus with that ’80s Kate Bush sound. Jon used to watch his dad’s VHS tapes of old MTV music videos, and it’s songs like this where you can hear that foundational influence. “Natural Science” showcases one of Jon’s most delicate vocal deliveries on the album, beginning with soft near-whispering lyrics, and breaking through to intimate, steady lines: “Why won’t you look at me / Why won’t you look my way/ Staring into the darkness / Of some Rothko painting / Never felt less surreal / It’s all I can see / feel.” “Natural Science” was one of the last songs finished for the record, and its process was different from the others. “It was a dream logic song,” Jon said, “I was watching clips of Twin Peaks: The Return and trying to write to that, looking at Pauli’s book of Rothko paintings and writing to that.” “You’d Never Say Goodbye” was an earworm that found him in the shower. “Don’t Look Back” was written in one sitting, and was the first single Jon released from This Is It, which Jon said was because people were really responding to that track. “They were drawn to it.”
When Jon started making these songs, he had a hand injury that left him uncertain he would be able to still play music. “I broke a glass in my hand and severed my nerve. I was out of work. I wasn’t sure how much music I’d be able to do, [there was] a few hours the feeling wasn’t coming back in my dominant hand. It was six months after I moved to Philly. That’s why I started playing in like… nine local bands.” There is a necessity, then, to the catchiness of these songs. And despite Jon’s perfectionism—and this album process having taken nearly six years—the songs don’t sound overworked. They ask you to loosen up. They invite you to give yourself over to the collective thrum of bodies in a basement, in a packed venue.
Throughout the record, there’s this motif of needing something to believe in. On “Riverside Cafe,” Jon asks, “Who do you believe?” On “LinkedIn” Jon says, “You can’t afford to believe,” and on “It Really Makes You Think” Jon sings, “Tell me what you believe.” So I ask Jon what he believes in today. He says facetiously, “I’m going to reference my favorite movie, which may be a surprise, the 1980s film Back to the Future: ‘I believe that if you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything.’” We both laugh, and I point out how much overlap there is between our moment and the decade he pulls so much inspiration from. In other words, I think the culture is ready for the dance-punk of Sunday Evening Drive. Jon nods and continues in earnest. “Living through the pandemic, this economic crisis, trying to make our dreams come true, it is imperative that we don’t give up.”
This is It comes out on all platforms October 27th. Sunday Evening Drive will be playing their album release show at PhilaMoCA November 21st to celebrate.
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Sara Mae | @scarymae
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