Sleeping Beauties - Sleeping Beauties LP

Spawned in the same creepy corner of the Pacific Northwest and from the remains of the fantastically underappreciated bands The Hunches, Eat Skull and The Hospitals are the Sleeping Beauties.  Big basement rock opens up on "Bobby and Suzie" with it's gluey flypaper tempo changes that brings to mind Alex Chilton's "Like Flies on Sherbert" and the Electric Eels mashed into a ball.  Rhythm piano played with an icepick is next on "Meth" and though it may be a tale of warning somehow adds allure to the temptation of having "got a weekend sack and it's Saturday, Sunday my life is crumbling".  Under the moss covered tremolo glam rock of "Wheeler" is a map to one of the catchiest choruses of the record.  The smell of bleach in the bathroom leads to "Potter's Daughter" which opens the door pretty enough with an invitation to relax and go "swimming in tampons" but in the last minute eventually peels back the skull again with Rod Meyer and Rob Enbom's scraping guitars.  Drug mules and biblical references tiptoe sweetly onto the bus of “Merchants of Glue" sounding poppy, primal and carsick at once.  The windows steam up in the Rocket from the Tombs-eque "Slumber Party" as the garbage boogie slides into an early Butthole Surfers like stream of unconsciousness until the bleary unhinged alarms jar us back into reality as it's time to be drained further at work.  “Hands Across America" continues to highlight singer Hart Gledhill as one of the most distressing throats since Captain Beefheart fried his with cocaine while competing with guitar solos louder than Teengenerate.  These burns are soothed on "Southie" evoking some kind of 13th floor elevators groove followed by the sad and warped and almost country tinged “Addicted to Drugs".  This respite is short lived however when the terrific push/pull - future/primitive rhythm section (Biggg Chris and Neil) kicks in on "50's Haircut/Gold Shoes" and in tune with the whole record Gledhill is in fine form.  After a while the gutter puzzles start to make sense like a schizophrenic does if you actually sit down and listen. When the last sands and guitars slide through the hourglass on "South Eugene" and mecifly let us come down gently, it's over too soon.  It is exciting to see a new band in 2016 that is singing about it's unique pain and pleasure, is not hidden in delay pedals and does not seem to care if you like it. This record probably makes you smarter for listening to it, the only problem is it erases your mind as well.  -Lars Finberg 2016