Artist: Sleep For Sleepers
Title: Discovery
Label: Independent
Release Date: 6.17.14
Reviewer: Jessica Cooper
Track Listing:
- Departure
- New American
- Polaroid Summer
- Black Lungs
- Deep Sea Divers
- 1987
- Stay Young
- Heartland
- Explore
- Laraine
- Every Season
I’m excited to see Sleep For Sleepers put out another full length because “The Clearing” is one of my favorite albums of all time. “Discovery” is a delight of nostalgic and energetic indie rock that remains in the realm of familiarity that the band has produced. Hard-hitting percussion fills and melodic swells on the electric guitar, along with the strong vocals, really pull this album together.
“Departure” is the instrumental first track of the album and features razzy, twinkly synth sounds and what sounds like an old space station broadcast. That spacey theme is present throughout the album, from the cover art to the subtle electronic transmissions and layers of interstellar space sounds.
The whole energy of this album floods throughout each song, with fast-paced drum cadences and dark, chuggy guitar melodies, bright electric fills and it never really slows down until the end, which is something that I enjoy about this band. It’s another one of those windows-down-driving-around-aimlessly bands. Tracks like “Polaroid Summer”, “Explore”, and “Stay Young” portray the raw passion of life that comes with nostalgia and young love.
“Laraine” is a more anthemic track, with a decrease in tempo, but very driving, and speaks of second chances. “Every Season” is the other slow track on the album, essentially suggesting to me that there is a new sense of life that rushes through a person when they experience love for the first time.
I think “Polaroid Summer” is a fitting title because the content of the song seems to be recalling memories, which is what we do with photographs. Pictures are a sweet reminder of good times we’ve had in the past. “Stay Young” talks about the feeling of wanting to freeze time in that first perfect moment of meeting someone new and figuring out everything about each other.
“1987” seems to be the story of someone whose life just went downhill, and it’s a little sad. Besides that, I’d say along with “Deep Sea Divers”, “New American”, and “Black Lungs”, it’s not one of my favorites on the album, and I don’t know why. I’ve just found myself skipping over them while writing this. That could change the more I listen to this album.
“Heartland” is another instrumental track, and is much like “Departure” in its sound, but seems to be eluding to the winding down of the album, whereas “Departure” had a sense of building up into the energetic first half.
Overall: Overall, I enjoy listening to “Discovery” with the exception of a few tracks. Like I said, that could change, but for right now, over half of it is exceptional in my opinion, and that’s enough for me to like the album as a whole. Honestly, “The Clearing” was so great and I didn’t necessarily expect this to be better, but it’s still good on its own. I will say that I’ll definitely be giving this a spin for a while, as I typically do with everything new that comes out. It drops on iTunes on Tuesday, or you can preorder one of 200 limited physical copies on Big Cartel!
RIYL: Number One Gun, Copeland.