Labels: Faux Discx – Smalltown America
Review by: Andy Malcolm
How have I not heard of this band before?! The Light Sleepers are a British indie rock band playing appropriately (given their name), horizontally laid back indie. The nine tunes on this disk just about break a sweat from time to time, applying a little muscle to the guitars, but for the most part they twinkle and jangle ever so daintily, harking back to bands such as Seam, the Wedding Present, Pot Valiant and Bedhead. The vocals are just about sung loud enough to peek out over the top of the instrumentation, although you may have trouble making out specific mumbled words. “Heart of the Crux” is one of the songs where they bust out, applying the foot to the accelerator and cranking it up a notch, although it doesn’t feel out of place amidst the rest of the tracks on here. For most of the rest of the time though, they somnambulate their way through this album to great effect, fuzzing up the guitars into lovely walls of noise now and again, whilst the rest of the while they kind of pick their way very carefully, allowing the gentle swaying of the guitars to take centre stage.
This is a pretty straight forward album, you won’t find an astonishing stand out song on here, but it does make for a very accomplished collection of songs that flow particularly well, and that’s always something that I look for in an LP. Really excited to hear where they go from here, it’s a pleasure to hear a band in this nation playing such music.