Atlanta post-rockers Sleep Therapy are back together after a few years off. The Observer is the final entry in a triptych of EPs they have released over the past year.
I haven't heard the other two parts of this series, but i really like what they are doing on The Observer. There are four songs in in just under twenty minutes here, but they pack a lot into that brief time span.
Patriarch starts slowly with a mess of distorted guitar. It burns along slowly as the rhythm ramps up, then it just pops with intense riffing and furious drumming. Vocalist John Lally is echoed and distant, his voice a haze under the grinding guitars. This reminds me a lot of late 1990s indie rock: Soul Asylum, Screaming Trees, that sort of thing. Sleep Therapy jam this out for seven minutes, and in the middle the music parts and Lally sings slowly while guitarist York Henderson play a lovely melody, his guitar tinkling as the rhythm slows behind them.
The Observer is a typical Sleep Therapy tune. It rocks along with the voice out front and clear as the guitars whirr and the drums thud. This could have been on their 2005 album Black Bells.
The guitars are really excellent on Follow, both Henderson and Lally really playing well as drummer Tom Bruno plays a loud but flat clattering behind them. Lally's voice is clear, soaring, and isolated. What they are doing shines really well here: this is noisy post-punk and well done.
And finally the EP ends with Empty Skies where, oddly enough, Joe Lally channels David Schelzel of The Ocean Blue. Henderson even plays a tinkling guitar bit and bassist Luke Bareis plays a laconic riff that really reminds me of Cerulean from The Ocean Blue. However, on the chorus, the guitars crunch as Bruno pounds the crap out of his drum kit, which is very unlike The Ocean Blue. But i really like the dichotomy here -- the delicate new wave and the riffing distorted shoegaze mingling together. Hmmm, now that i think about that is also a good description of The Sound of the Color of the Sun by SIANspheric. And, yes, there is a bit of SIANspheric in what Sleep Therapy are doing in general, so that comparison is apt.
It's a fun little EP. Sleep Therapy are doing some interesting things now. I guess i need to go back and listen to the first two thirds of this triptych now.
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