Pictured: Sleeping States is here for the temp job.
Sleeping States (Markland Starkie, no relation to Ringo) is a great mix of moody, spacious, hipster rock and weirdy-folk rainy day music. A little fellow from across the pond, it would be errant of me to classify him as “shoegaze”, but a little guy can’t help himself sometimes. That being said, I think this is smarter than shoegaze. Nothin’ against skinny guys with walls of reverby distortion, but Sleeping States whole vibe seems more, well, thought out than that. A quick run-through of the tracks finds SS mixing acoustic guitars, laid back drums, and even a Pinback hook. I don’t know how he did it, but SS manages to find a way to stay layed back without falling into the “oh sheesh, feel sorry for me” vibe that so many artists tend to do.
I labored with what tracks to put up on the website. We played the pop-iest one on the radio show two weeks ago (keep listening to WHYS 96.3 on Thursdays at 9 or stream us at http://whysradio.org), but I somehow feel like the internet can raise us above that. Maybe we can dig deeper, feel deeper, look at porn deeper. Anyway, I decided to put up the first two tracks of Starkies’ new album, “There, the Open Spaces”. Please listen to them back to back. Quiet introspection, followed by weird guitar freakout, followed by just awesome songwriting. The end result is just plain amazing.
There’s something distinctly British when a guy harmonizes three parts about the rain, getting ready in the morning, and “ringing someone up”. See below
Stay with this next one for the long haul. Trust me.
Comments 1
Good stuff.
Posted 12 Dec 2007 at 11:15 pm ¶Post a Comment