Forming in a Sydney guitar shop, The Sleep-Ins took advantage of their members’ technological expertise by producing and recording every note of their 8 track mini-album without any outside interference. Lacking a conventional studio, this release was pieced together over many months in peoples’ flats, a farm and an old warehouse. This step-by-step recording method captures a very relaxed and casual atmosphere which is evident through all the songs.
Opener Silver State may contain a wall of food-blender guitars and arcade game bleeps but it’s the Pavement-esque swagger that grabs your attention. The vocals are buried to My Bloody Valentine depths and are purred out in a hung-over whisper. It’s reminiscent of The Dandy Warhols at their most stoned and care-free. The tone of slacker-confidence carries over into Angelina and finds the band with a remarkable level of self assurance (“but you dig my style”) before the song dismantles itself in a spider’s web of out of tune guitars and pushes itself of a cliff.
The whole thing seems so off-the-cuff and self involved that while it’s easy to get lost inside The Sleep-Ins hazy world, sometimes we’re left pleading for a moment where the band actually vies for the listener’s attention. It’s easy to imagine all the songs being performed with permanent shrugs. Also, the decision to disguise the vocals in a haze of murmurs and simultaneous guitar lines perfectly captures the stoned atmosphere but makes recognising and engaging with a lyric pretty impossible.
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There are moments where The Sleep-Ins compete for our attention. In Chrome Skullcap And Matching Codpiece we are given a resplendent Pixies impression with vocal yelps and abstract imagery. The larynx shredding vocal performance is actually pretty startling and (importantly) impossible to ignore. Unfortunately the song then restricts itself to a cyclical guitar pattern that repeats to insane levels of introspection. Similarly the stop-start rhythms of Astro-not forces you to take note and try to get your head round the pattern before the band run out of ideas and resort to covering their complex creation with masses of feedback.
While it’s refreshing to come across a band that aren’t trying to ram everything down your throat, as not much on offer here is as melodic or charming as the mini-albums opener, the remainder of the tracks just wash over you with little impression except for the atmosphere they create. Unfortunately I couldn’t tell if any of them were about girls or outer space.
The Sleep-Ins on Myspace
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