On the road with A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Philly bedroom band turned multinational pop conglomerate

ALWAYS SUNNY: ASDiG has members in Philly, Brooklyn and Sydney.
Zoe Jet Ellis

En route from Arizona to Missouri in a van with no AC and lousy phone reception, A Sunny Day in Glasgow — Philadelphia’s finest practitioners of experimental shoegaze pop — have little to do between gigs besides appreciate nature and laugh.

“The few spots with no reception are places with the most beautiful scenery,” says drummer Adam Herndon. “I like seeing cows or wondering what life is like for people who live in lone shacks in the desert.”

This tour is one of the longer cross-country drives in the history of the band. “There’s joke-making and music-listening happening,” says singer Jen Goma. 

“I split my time between reading and sleeping with a wet rag over my face,” says guitarist and keyboardist Josh Meakim. Long trips are nothing new for an ensemble whose membership is scattered across the globe. ASDiG mastermind/founder Ben Daniels currently lives in Sydney, Australia. Goma and bassist Ryan Newmyer live in Brooklyn. “I’m still here in South Philly,” chimes in Meakim; his apartment is a couple of blocks away from drummer Herndon’s place in Pennsport. “We drink beers in his amazing backyard.” 

Everybody living so far apart makes things take longer, obviously. “The distance is a novel obstacle, so the result is novel as well,” says vocalist/cellist Annie Fredrickson, referring to the band’s most recent record, the sharp, strange Sea When Absent (Lefse Records). It was recorded over the course of three years in producer Jeff Zeigler’s Uniform Recording studio in North Philly. Before that, ASDiG preferred the cozy recording confines of Daniels’ bedroom. 

Sea When Absent is a radical departure from both what ASDiG has done in the past — on electronics-heavy albums such as Ashes Grammar — as well as from the shoegaze genre, with the new album’s echoless tones. Sea When Absent might be ASDiG at their best, or it might not sound like them at all.

“It’s hard to say what distance does, but I’m glad it hasn’t stopped us from making music together,” notes Goma before righting a rumor that’s run rampant in the press. “When people say, ‘No two members were ever in the same room’ — that’s untrue. We made Sea When Absent over a long period of time, so yes, there were moments when we weren’t all there, but for a large portion of the recording, a majority were in that studio together.”

That all ASDiG members are part of the dialogue — the writing, the arranging, this interview — comes down to the band’s slow-but-sure democratization with Daniels ceding several daily responsibilities to his bandmates. 

With Zeigler as producer, Meakim helped guide ASDiG’s sound with the aid of Newmyer, while Goma handled a lion’s share of the lyrics. This opened Daniels’ arching, testy pop to different emotional experiences. ASDiG’s expansive sound grew ardently dissonant and more severe. 

“I love sharing the writing of the lyrics because in the end it’s just trying ideas and seeing what works,” says Daniels. In his estimation, ASDiG’s lyrics are more about getting the right sound. 

“I think the best words come out of when one of us changes something in a slightly different way the other person had not thought of at all,” says Fredrickson. “Mostly I’m writing about wizards and ghosts,” says Meakim.

When I ask Goma if Daniels is always amenable to changes, she laughs. “Always amenable is a funny first option. We have disagreements about how something should go but we were all open to sharing ideas for this last album. We grew a lot as a group making this.”

ASDiG’s metamorphosis has yielded catchier melodies and a surprisingly dry sound without the reverb that was once the band’s signature. “It doesn’t feel naked, just good to have dry and wet vocals — and everything in between — as an option,” says Goma. 

“I had a definite sound I was going for overall that I kept in mind while mixing — less reverb, more low end,” says Daniels. With the changes he and the band have gone through since 2006 when Daniels played with his two singing sisters (Robin and Lauren), it’s a wonder he even recognizes A Sunny Day in Glasgow. “These six people right now have been in ASDiG longer than anyone in this band’s history. I don’t know what goals I had at the start of this, but the feel and aesthetics are definitely different in the best possible way.”

Sun., July 27, 9 p.m., $12-$14, with Pattern Is Movement and Myrrias, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com.