First Impressions: After Sunrise by Circles Around the Sun and Mikaela Davis

Four jams. Two sides. One harp. Sounds like a bad trip, doesn’t it? In the capable hands of veteran “disco cosmonauts” John Lee Shannon (guitar), Adam MacDougall (keyboards), Dan Horne (bass), Mark Levy (drums and percussion) and Andres Renteria (percussion), however, and with relative rookie Mikaela Davis (harp) joining in, it’s anything but. It’s 30 minutes of bliss.

For those not up on their jam band lore, Circles Around the Sun came together in 2015 when the Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann’s son Justin asked Neal Casal, a much-respected singer, songwriter and guitarist, to create the intermission music for the Dead’s Fare Thee Well concerts. He recruited MacDougall, Horne and Levy into the fold. Their recorded jams were so well-received by the audience that Rhino Records signed them and released their first record, Interludes for the Dead. The band released additional albums through 2020, when Casal unfortunately passed. Guitarist John Lee Shannon signed on for their 2022 album, Language, which also featured Mikaela Davis on the title track.

Davis, for those not in the know, is a tremendously talented singer, songwriter and harpist. She first came to my attention when she opened for the Staves in early 2017; the sight of a harp on stage sent waves of trepidation throughout the audience (or maybe just inside of me) until she started to play. Her full-length debut, Delivery, arrived the following year; it’s a tasty sonic stew that’s best described as channeling the AM hits and FM favorites of the 1970s. Last year’s And Southern Star, however, is in another league entirely. I wrote at the time that it sounds “a bit like Sheryl Crow fronting the Grateful Dead circa American Beauty or Workingman’s Dead,” but that doesn’t do it justice. It’s a phenomenal outing.

The After Sunrise EP features two original compositions, “Gloaming Way” and “Moonbow,” a cover of Sérgio Mendes’ “After Sunrise,” plus a live rendition of “Language” from January 2023 in Boston that, as with the three studio tracks, finds the band and Davis laying down a trance-like groove. The set is also notable for featuring the first vocals to appear on a Circles Around the Sun recording when Davis’ lush “la-la-las” add color to “After Sunrise.”

Not everyone enjoys instrumental music, of course, but for those who enjoy breaking free from the strict parameters of modern music and grooving to a guitar that gives way to keyboards and then harp, and beats a-plenty, this EP should be the next thing you listen to. It aptly conjures that moment when night gives way to day. Thanks to that darn cat, in fact, this morning I rose in the pre-dawn and, after I fed him, opened the window blinds in the den and watched while first light showered the communal lawn. It was a magical moment made all the more so by the chosen soundtrack, After Sunrise.