Theselah
No Sleep More Fun
(K.O.A. Records)
For a sophomore album, No Sleep More Fun shows a ton of promise for this young four piece band from New York. Although they jump styles like mad and it's sometimes rather jarring, the ten tracks work mainly end up working for hte most part on the strength of the groups solid songwriting. The way that the album is arranged, it's almost as if the group is actually playing tricks on the listener, which may sort of be the point of the group, as they even have one song that is simply a scream-along theme song for the record label.
The album actually starts out on a rather sedated note with "Nothing Special." Moving along with lazy, layered guitars and shimmering drums and sleepy vocals, it's actually one of the best tracks on the entire release, but also one that sort of gives a false sense of security with things to come. Just about the time you think that the group is going to fall into the slowcore category (sounding something like the best tracks by Acetone). Actually, instead of hitting the listener on the head right away, they ease into things a bit more with the hazy sounding "Green-Blue Crayon." The instrumental track is mainly just a swirl of guitars without any rhythm section, but it builds ever so slightly from the opening track because of the minor rough edge on the guitars.
From there, the group launches into a bit more crunch with the track "Bad-Ass HiFi." The instrumental track cranks things up ten notches with a huge, flaming guitar riff at the core of the track and echoed-out drums that fill in any of the edges that haven't caught the bleed. The group keeps the same crunch on the very next track "Uryne," but mixes them up with a bit of psychadelic and some dreamy vocals. The track still has plenty of rumble, but sounds surprisingly melodic.
The end of the album finds the group changing up styles even more, as they move from slower (the somewhat dreary "Lazy Dresser") to fast (both "Take It Fast Or Take It Slow" and "Anthem Of KOA" mix heavily feedbacked riffs with screamed vocals) and back again. The album closer of "Little Song To Self," is exactly what it says it is; a quiet acoustic track with restrained vocals that clocks in under two minutes and closes out the album in the same style that it was brought in with. As mentioned above, some of the best tracks on the disc are the slower ones, and unfortunately the album jumps back and forth from one style to the other. It's great if you have a short attention span, but somewhat distracting if you're trying to just sit down and listen to the disc at the same volume, only to have one track drop off almost entirely while the next one blasts you out. Still, there are some very excellent things on the disc and if the group could hone in on their style a smidge more, they'd be even more exciting.
Rating: 6.25
