The second full-length album by Glasgow, Scotland’s Aereogramme finds the band refining a sound that they’ve been working on since they formed in the late 1990s, a sound that is quite difficult to pin down into one category. As with 2001’s A Story in White, Sleep and Release often incorporates singer Craig B’s wispy vocals with string sections and keyboards, with muted drums echoing underneath, like in “Black Path” or “A Simple Process of Elimination,” only to turn around and kick you in the stomach with loud, aggressive guitars, maddening percussion and violent screaming a few songs later with “Wood” or “Older.”
Other songs such as “No Really, Everything’s Fine” include elements from both extremes. While an angry guitar chord progression tears through the disjointed drums, a surprisingly soft piano lead lilts above the distorted cacophony. “Indiscretion #243,” the opening cut, begins disjointedly as well. The bassline starts the song alone, and the guitars and drums crash in and out at seemingly random points.
For a band that, on paper, appears to have a bit of an identity crisis, Aereogramme is able to take these elements and put them together into one cohesive package. They have apparently perfected this talent a bit since A Story in White, which would shift from one extreme to the other with little warning, often within one song. Sleep and Release’s greatest improvement over its predecessor is that each track doesn’t seem to be entirely out of left field.
That is not to say that the album is at all predictable. When “Wood” crashes to a close with feedback and white noise, a strange, electronic melody similar to one you might find on an arcade game from the early 1980s can be heard in the background, fading in to end the track. “Yes” takes over shortly thereafter, the only straight-ahead, quick-and-to-the-point rocker on the entire album, clocking in at a mere two minutes.
As if that wasn’t confusing enough, the album winds to an end with the low-key trio of “In Gratitude,” “A Winter’s Discord,” and the album’s six and a half minute closer, simply titled “-.” “-” is a standout track here. After the vocals finish about a minute into the song, a melancholy, plodding theme repeats itself in a couple of different time signatures at once, as the shuffling drums get progressively louder. Around the four minute mark, a beautiful violin solo is introduced, taking the song to its graceful end.
Sleep and Release may be a bit difficult to swallow in one sitting, but once you get used to being knocked back and forth several times between all the different genres of music Aereogramme can successfully stuff into an album, it might just be one of the most rewarding listening experiences to be released in recent years. Sleep and Release and a free MP3 of “Wood” are available at www.matadorrecords.com/aereogramme.