 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The Sleeping
Believe What We Tell You
2004, One Day Savior Records
I stumbled across this band quite by accident.
Some friends of mine were in a band that was doing a show in Orillia, Ontario (five or six hours‘ drive), at the Legion or wherever, and a band called the Sleeping had gotten on the bill, since they were touring through the area and needed a show that particular night. Striking up a conversation with guitarist Cameron Keym, it came out that he used to be in skycamefalling, who released an album on Ferret Records a few days ago to critical acclaim before calling it quits in due time. Hailing from Long Island, the Sleeping recruited the services of the Illair Production team (Coheed & Cambria) to put together Believe What We Tell You, a sarcastically-titled opus that spans eleven tracks, plus an intro and outro in keeping with the critique-of-mass-media them: the album‘s cover art pictures a silhouette of a timeless businessman, perusing his paper in the 1950s living room while a giant radio tower blares out signals directly outside his window.
‘Original‘ would be the term most easily applied to the Sleeping, as this band, while most definitely a rock band, uses a ton of instrumentation and spaced-out, imaginative songwriting to shake one‘s headphones. ‘The Big Breakdown, Day 1‘ and ‘The Big Breakdown, Day 2‘ are just a weird, almost prog-rock one-two punch that sound unlike anything I‘ve heard before, and it‘s followed directly by ‘If Your Heart Was Broken, You‘d Be Dead‘, which consists entirely of the sounds of a social gathering, gradually overpowered by a choir of female voices chanting the title for a while before the rock kicks back in. Elsewhere, the age-old quiet-loud dynamic is amplified to ‘really quiet to really loud‘ (‘Funus-Eris‘), electronics and synths are incorporated on ‘Sunday Matinee (Reel to Reel)‘, and some surf guitar makes an unexpected appearance on ‘Detonation: Paradise‘.
Throughout, the production shines. The Illair combo of Michael Birnbaum and Chris Bittner really came through on this record; the breakdowns spliced in random places are crushingly heavy, the riffs are smooth, and Doug Robinson‘s vocals, reminiscent of Rise Against‘s Tim McIlrath, command the mix. With their skill at gradually building songs up only to take the wrecking ball to them at strategic points, the Sleeping have crafted a winner.
- Mike Postma
Copyright ©2005