The Big Sleep
Sleep Forever
Release Date: Feb 19, 2008
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: Frenchkiss
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Buy Sleep Forever from Amazon
Album Review: Sleep Forever by The Big Sleep
Very Good, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating B
The sound is certainly big, but this Brooklyn trio’s sophomore CD is far from soporific. Big Sleep traffic primarily in stern instrumental rock of the bracing dig-these-clanging-guitars variety, the type of stuff Steve Albini lives for. Truth be told, Sleep Forever may be a tad too stylistically slippery for its own good; ”Organs” is a prickly exercise in progpsych fusion, ”Little Sister” flaunts flamenco flourishes, ”Undying Love” skirts hair-metal territory, and so on.
Based on rating 7.0/10
Review by Brian Reid.
Based on rating 7/10
The Big Sleep will probably be slept upon forever, despite the relative majesty of albums like Sleep Forever, their second on French Kiss after Son of the Tiger in 2006. It kind of pains me to review albums that are merely, you know, rock records, but The Big Sleep deserve it, and occasionally a release wears down my defenses by avoiding precious guitar polemics and focusing on just, you know, rocking. The band reminds me of Calla, being an attractive 3 piece based in NYC that somehow avoids the filthy lucre of magazine jizm by ignoring trends and focusing on their own textural, clean, quiet/noise-y muse.
Opinion: Excellent
It’s hard, for the moment, to imagine the Big Sleep being someone’s favorite band. Their medium doesn’t really leave room for it. They play rock music, limber and forceful, but without any particular stake in novelty; their songs are logical, calculated, even cunning, but not so studied as to constitute a commentary on rock music, an attitude you could adopt as your own.
'Sleep Forever'
is available now