Sleepies
Sleepies (2010)
Brian Shultz
The first full-length from Brooklyn's Sleepies is a slight refinement on their introductory EP, Join the Shark. You get lo-fi, garage-tinged pop-punk with equal amounts of jaggedness and melody, improved production and a more interesting way of them going about things.
There's a lot of cauterized vocals and spazzy energy that essentially drives this self-titled affair. But there are some interesting touches at play here and there elsewhere. Wound-up, screwy guitars get quasi-mathy for a second in "Monolith", while their singer gets sort of Eric Paul-ish in "Dome".
In other words, you definitely get bits of late '80s indie rock and early '90s noise rock, and it's probably what drives Sleepies to be much more than a simple, garage-y pop-punk record. Even when they take things more basic, though, it's not bad. Smooth backing "whoo"s add a lighter element to "Hypochondriac Blues" and the faster rush of "Squirrel Guns" has a few clean breaks where a bouncier section suddenly punches through. "Summer Bummer" feels stripped-down for a little while, but it's still as snotty and dirty as the band are capable of, and noisier riffs corrode it soon enough anyway.
Granted, Sleepies is still fairly forgettable. For all the band's tricks and sly spasms, there's not much that actually sticks. But it's enjoyable to watch their process unfold and observe how they serrate the edges of their pop-punk sounds into something certainly distinguishable and fresh.