Bio
Salads and Sunbeams is a psych-pop group based in Denver, Colorado. Salads’ primary singer/songwriter, Nathan Brazil, started the band in 2014 as an outlet for the simplistic, poppy, retro songs that didn’t quite fit with the bands he was involved in at the time. Members have come and gone, though Denver music fixture and Brazil’s longtime collaborator, Suzi Allegra, has been involved with nearly everything the group has done.
The first incarnation of the group released a self-titled EP in 2014 with little fanfare, though it was very good and captures the original, sloppy/poppy thrust of the group. Shortly thereafter, life intervened. The death of someone close to Brazil and a shared desire for change and growth scattered the group across the country and the world. After the shakeup, as the world slowly came back into focus, Brazil headed to the basement and recorded another Salads and Sunbeams album, Tintinnabulation, almost entirely on his own, though with notable additions from Allegra. This new album sprawled beyond simple pop to encompass ambient pieces, covers of Victorian comic-opera, the use of a professional string quartet, synthesizers, and general experimentation.
Very proud of the album, Brazil released it digitally in early 2020, just in time for the Covid pandemic to eclipse and redefine its relevance.
Returning to Denver in late 2021, Brazil reconnected with Suzi Allegra and the larger Denver music scene and restarted the group as a live project, writing and rehearsing new material in addition to previously unperformed material from Tintinnabulation.
The new group made its debut at Down In Denver 2022 and continues to play shows in and around Denver. Their new full-length album, Into the Starless Night was released March, 18 2025.
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The current lineup is: Nathan Brazil (guitar/keys/vocals), Suzi Allegra (bass/keys/vocals), Justin Drummond (drums), and Eric Thompson (guitar/keys)
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Tom Murphy - Queen City Sounds
Birdy Magazine #135 March 2025
Salads and Sunbeams - Into the Starless Night
The exquisite clarity of tone throughout this album is immediately striking. It is not an artificially pristine lucidity because there is a warmth and sensitivity in the songwriting, refreshing in its human immediacy. Sure, the touchstones are there of 60s psychedelic pop and 90s indepop, but it isn’t imitative. There is a creative ambition and execution underlying every song, and the poetry of the lyrics combine the mythical and the personal in equal measure. The fantastical imagery functions in a similar way that a Tom Robbins novel or a Neutral Milk Hotel album captures perfect moments that strike you as significant in real time. Nathan Brazil has saved up nuggets of such peak moments to craft a storybook of an album that can be intense in its emotional honesty. But it's casted in perfectly crafted melodies cradled in comforting rhythms and informed by deep psychological insight into that it is to be an adult that hasn’t forgotten what it feels like to experience the vitality of life.
