Choosing a band name is a tricky thing. If you choose one that sounds lame, people will write you off before they've even heard you. In this case, if you choose a name that's very close to a band that's already existed, then the listener has to wonder a few things. The listener wonders if Sunny Day Sets Fire just doesn't know of the group in question, or if they just assumed that everyone would be too stupid to see the similarity. And this one doesn't even really make sense. But I realize what a pretentious asshole I look like ranting about a band's name and not their music, so let us digress.
The Stranger Remix EP begins with, you guessed it, the original version of "Stranger." It's a cute indie-pop song with mostly indiscernible instruments save the prominent drums and an echoic guitar. Everything is pretty easy on the ears, but the song is passable; nothing really sets it apart from other groups of the poppy electronica-ish subgenre.
The remaining seven tracks on this EP include three more versions of "Stranger" and a few other remixes of their songs. Some prominent DJs like XXXChange and The Cool Kids lend their tweaking abilities to make Sunny Day Sets Fire's songs more appropriate for a club setting. Some tracks simply amplify the electronica touches of the original songs, but others simply butcher the song, to the point where the DJ must have just laid the original vocals over their own beats. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it becomes harder to judge the Stranger Remix EP as a work of Sunny Day Sets Fire.
I'm not sure I really see the point of this EP. The remixes are fine; I'd say they're dance club-worthy. But I don't think they don't mean much if you haven't listened to the group previously. And even if you have, judging by the original version of "Stranger," they're probably not much to write home about either. And this goes beyond my frustration of using the full moniker Sunny Day Sets Fire for every reference because the abbreviation Sunny Day belongs to another group in my mind.
And while I'm at it, I think it's notable that in the at least two years that Sunny Day Sets Fire has been around, they have five official releases. Impressive, right? However, there are only eight different songs that span them. Maybe it's just me, but any musical group that has five releases should have written more than eight songs, to avoid redundancy. Having only the same four songs over three consecutive releases doesn't have much value in my book, and you can call me out on that any day. Or perhaps on a sunny day...
