Paul Kantner & Grace Slick
Sunfighter

The San Francisco Bay Area was, and still is, a remarkably fertile place for culture and music; one thinks of the poets and writers of the San Francisco Renaissance or the Beat Generation, along with an overwhelming number of rock/folk/psychedelic bands born in the counties around the bay. Especially San Francisco was the center of the hippie and protest counterculture, a movement that shook hundreds of thousands of young people starting in 1967 and throughout the following two years.

Indeed, the following two years... In 1971, the season of revolts is practically over, and little remains of both the protests and the dreams of collective peaceful coexistence. For a psychedelic rock band born and raised in those territories, who believed in those values, singing their ideal (and contradictory) way of life, who participated in the most important rock festival in history, and whose members formed new groups and projects, what could be the motivations to continue their career in a dignified way without becoming obsolete?

The first answer that comes to mind concerns the desire to make music and continue to compose with the same honesty that has distinguished them from the beginning. Surrounded by all the musician friends of the Bay Area who have often collaborated with them. Indeed, although this is a Kantner & Slick production (the couple at the time, even in life), besides the presence of some members of the Jefferson Airplane and the newly formed Jefferson Starship, this record can also count on the participation of David Crosby and Graham Nash, the wind instruments of the group Tower of Power, and the indispensable Jerry Garcia on guitar and banjo, blending into a meticulously arranged orchestral sound.

Disenchantment but also a sense of belonging to a planet too often mistreated are the themes that run through the 42 minutes of the record; in "Earth Mother" the love for Earth is starkly contrasted with the pain of her children "torn apart by coke and heroin", while there's no room for imagination in the line "Goodbye San Francisco Dream" of the nostalgic "Million". But there are also lighter moments that exalt (even musically) the spectacle of nature and living in contact with it ("Look at the Wood") and fighting for the fate of the planet alongside other peoples ("Holding Together"), in addition to a psychedelic instrumental interlude inspired by the sinking of the Titanic. Paul Kantner and Grace Slick have thus managed to compose a work that is very pleasing from a compositional/musical point of view and does not disappoint when compared to their glorious past, albeit the content of the lyrics has evolved into a relaxed and inevitably nostalgic environmentalism.

N.B. There are two dedications present on the record: the title track "Sunfighter" to Marty Balin, and "China" to the couple’s daughter China Wing Kantner (who appears in a photo on the album cover).