Cory M. Coons has never chased trends, and on The Sun Sessions he avoids them with the determination of someone who’s lived long enough to know better. Recorded live at Memphis’s Sun Studio — ground zero for rockabilly mythology and American roots essentialism — this four-song EP rejects modern gloss in favor of the old-school virtues: tape, breath, guitar, nerve. Coons isn’t reinventing anything here, and to his credit, he doesn’t try. What he does do is remind us why the acoustic, the unvarnished, and the imperfect still matter.
Take “Crumbs ’24,” a 20-years-later revisitation of one of his earliest songs. It’s so bare you could almost miss it, the way you might overlook a handwritten note in a world of billboards. But like the best singer-songwriter confessions, it grows in your ear. Coons recorded it in one take, with vintage mics and half-inch tape — the kind of setup that forces the performer to show up wholly or fall apart audibly. He shows up. The melody doesn’t soar; it hovers. The vocal doesn’t shine; it warms. This is what happens when an artist acknowledges time as collaborator rather than adversary.
Then there’s “Memphis Whiskey Blues,” the EP’s new single and its most immediately accessible track. Blues pastiche? Sure. But Coons leans into its clichés with enough ease and self-awareness that it plays less like imitation and more like continuation. His lyrics — simple, sturdy, occasionally sly — sound like they were carved into bar tops across the Delta. The groove is unhurried, even resigned, but that resignation is where the charm lives. Not the kind of blues that changes your life; the kind that keeps you company.
“Faded Glory (Land of the Free)” edges toward political territory, but gently — Coons isn’t indicting the country so much as grieving and hoping for it. It’s earnest, maybe too earnest for some ears, but sincerity is one of the currencies he trades in, and here he spends it wisely.
The closing “Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel” medley is more wink than statement — a brisk, good-natured nod to the room’s most famous alumnus. Coons isn’t pretending to out-Elvis Elvis, and thankfully, he doesn’t try. The performance is loose, lived-in, a friendly handshake between past and present.
The Sun Sessions isn’t essential, but it is honest — and in a marketplace bloated with digital maximalism, that honesty registers as its own quiet rebellion. Sometimes the smallest records say the most simply by remembering what music sounded like before it was smoothed, tuned, and polished beyond recognition. Coons remembers. Here, he proves it.
–Bob Christman
