Sleeping At Last: Storyboards
Sleeping At Last is releasing Storyboards, their fourth full-length independently this week. This Chicago three-piece has intertwined their sound with a string quartet, more than their previous two albums that showcased the same quartet. Sleeping At Last is preparing for a national tour this fall; details are pending.
Storyboards is a delicate and emotionally moving album, opening with Porcelain where Ryan O’Neal sings a line that is reflected throughout the album, “and everything I loved was made of porcelain, ready to break.” The texture of the guitar’s nylon strings carries the song, and feathery strings lift the song thirty seconds into the opening.
The inflections of Ryan’s vocals implore you to take notice of the urgent reflections Ryan is making. Birdcage Religion is a great example of this, “So soften these edges and straighten out my tie. Help me remember the hope that I have compromised. Please be the broken record for me.”
Chandeliers is constructed around a floating piano melody that eventually gives way to Rhodes. Naive is slow moving and continues the broken metaphor, “God knows we have been naive, and a bit nearsighted to say the least. It’s broken glass at children’s feet, that gets swept aside unexpectedly.”
Side By Side picks the album up, with well defined layers of acoustic and mandolin fingerpicking. Slow and Steady asks questions about the soul, “Maybe the soul is the suitcase that holds the backup plan. Collection of keys and the patience we need to start again.”
Clockwork opens with an gorgeous and complex string arrangement, and sustained through the entire song. Unmade follows with delicate fingerpicking that doesn’t build dynamically as most Sleeping at Last songs do, but it doesn’t need to. “I believe that we’ve got it wrong, got it wrong. We realize when it’s said and done that in our words we lost so much more than we’ve ever won. It’s in our nature to complicate, but in the end it’s the casualties that carry on the weight.”