"Sunset Rollercoaster turn down the volume and fill bigger rooms"

For most of the last decade, Sunset Rollercoaster (落日飛車) sounded like a late-night drive: warm synths, saxophone, a soft-rock glide that fans and press filed next to city pop. On their fifth album, Quit Quietly, the Taipei band set much of that aside. The record is built on acoustic guitar and framed as a farewell to their older sound, and in 2026 it has carried them further than the glossier records did, to a Golden Melody Award and a world tour whose North American leg is still running this month.

A band that came back

The group formed in Taipei in 2009, released Bossa Nova in 2011 and then split. They regrouped in 2015, and Cassa Nova in 2018 and Soft Storm in 2020 made them one of the most internationally visible bands from Taiwan, with stages at Fuji Rock and Coachella and sold-out tours across Asia, Europe and the U.S. The current five-piece is Kuo-Hung Tseng on vocals and guitar, Hung-Li Chen on bass, Shao-Hsuan Wang on keyboards, Tsun-Lung Lo on drums and Hao-Ting Huang on saxophone.

Their reach has always run through collaboration. In 2024 they made AAA with the Korean band Hyukoh after months of sessions in South Korea, and that record won Best Vocal Recording Album at the 36th Golden Melody Awards. Their circle also takes in Parcels, Phum Viphurit and Michael Seyer.

The quiet record

Quit Quietly arrived on August 8, 2025, and it is a smaller, closer record than anything they had made before. Record Store Day Australia counts 11 tracks with guests Oh Hyuk, Anpu and Leah Dou, and notes that most of the songs were written on tour, including "Humor Tumor," which came out of a health check-up. The album has been described as a diary of everyday life and fragments of ideas.

The band explained the shift in the same piece. After touring with up to ten people on stage, working as five at home taught them that, in their words, "sometimes having less actually lets you hear what was already there." The line works as a summary of the album. The saxophone and keys are still in the songs, but they now frame a guitar and a voice instead of a wall of sound.

The saxophone and keys now frame a guitar and a voice instead of a wall of sound.

That restraint has travelled. Asia Blooming reports the album reached the Top 200 of the 2025 U.S. NACC albums chart, the college radio chart, which is a reasonable measure of how a Mandarin-language indie record lands with American programmers.

2026: cassette, trophy, tour

The album's second life began on April 18, when Quit Quietly came out as a Record Store Day exclusive cassette in Australia, Taiwan and Japan, the first release in a joint Asia-Pacific focus by the three countries' Record Store Day organisers. The band said a quieter record suited a format that asks listeners for more patience.

At the 37th Golden Melody Awards in Taipei on June 27, Sunset Rollercoaster won Best Band, and Quit Quietly was nominated for Album of the Year alongside The Crane's Same Stories, Different Narratives. The top prize went to Jolin Tsai's Pleasure, but a nomination in that field for a stripped-down band record says something about where Taiwanese music's centre of gravity sits.

The tour is called Q COMES Q GOES. Its North American leg opened at History in Toronto on September 9, then Citizens House of Blues in Boston and Brooklyn Steel in New York. The western half is still ahead:

• October 16: The Novo, Los Angeles
• October 18: The Warfield, San Francisco
• October 21: Showbox SoDo, Seattle
• October 24: The Centre in Vancouver

Those are large rooms for a band that just made its softest record. They also show that Sunset Rollercoaster's audience followed them into the quiet rather than waiting for the old sound to return.

• Album: Quit Quietly (August 8, 2025)
• 2026 honours: Best Band, 37th Golden Melody Awards; Album of the Year nominee
• On tour: Q COMES Q GOES, North America through October 24