Sparkles In July

‘Sparkles in July’ arrives at the album’s exact midpoint, and the timing feels deliberate. The two tracks before it, ‘May Flowers’ and ‘June Gloom’, share a tempo and lean into tenderness and emotional weight. This one breaks the spell: the tight, funky groove kicks in and suddenly there’s daylight. PCBender’s lead guitar moves freely between rhythmic chops and full melodic solos without losing the thread, and the rhythm section keeps things spacious enough that each run lands with real clarity. It sits somewhere between a Robben Ford workout and a late-period Allman Brothers instrumental cut, warm and confident without overstaying its welcome at three and a half minutes. That lift carries into ‘Too August’, which settles back into tender territory from a higher energy floor than it would have had otherwise. In an album that tracks twelve months of emotional weather, ‘Sparkles in July’ earns its place as the moment summer actually shows up.