Kelly Wingate

Item: Are You Sleeping, Love?
Author: Bert Gangl

Are You Sleeping, Love?

(2000)

Reviewed by Bert Gangl

Discogs Bandcamp

Label independentThe Phantom Tollbooth2001

dream pop indie rock shoegaze slowcore

Kelly Wingate began as the brainchild of high school friends Trent Dabbs and Jonathan Shull. The guitarists, along with drummer Joey Pensak, debuted the band at a cafe in the college town of Starkville, Mississippi, and worked for roughly a year without a bassist before enlisting mutual friend Adam White to fill the slot. With White on board, the band worked to refine their live sound and eventually placed a tape of one of their concerts in the hands of Jackson, Mississippi, songwriter Neilson Hubbard. Hubbard produced the group's 1999 independent debut, Palewaves, which was recorded at a studio in Memphis in less than a week.

Like its predecessor, the bulk of the sophomore release, Are You Sleeping, Love?, mirrors the sadcore/slow-core sound of artists like Low, Red House Painters and American Music Club. Nearly all of the songs are rife with the ringing melody lines, slow-as-molasses guitar work and languorous musical pace that have come to typify the slow-core genre. And the lyrics adapt the introspective, often depressive stance that has become part and parcel of the vast majority of sadcore artists. Songs like "Stand Apart," employ a droning, repetitive musical attack together with an almost stream of consciousness lyrical approach (Outside my window/ The ambulance down the street/ I watch it pass), while others, like "It's Not the Love," exhibit the lush, atmospheric musical backdrop and melancholy outlook (I'm not gonna make you care/ One less hurt inside of me/ It's my choices, I confess/ The results of this mess) that inform the lion's share of the Sleeping album. The group does step outside its slow-core margins here and there, though. "Last Lullaby" offers up a fine combination of Beatlesque tunefulness and major-to-minor chord changes, while the heavily arpeggiated guitar structures on "Forgiven Sands" are built on the classic folk framework of artists like Jim Croce and Dan Fogelberg. And "Thousand Circles" harks back to the early '80s jangle pop of the dB's or REM by virtue of its uncharacteristically peppy percussion track and chiming, Byrdsian guitars.

But, while songs like these infuse Sleeping with a decidedly infectious pop sensibility, the album is still plagued by an abundance of weaker material. Although the low, twangy guitar sound and emotive violin work of "Guilt" are pleasant enough sonic treatments, they aren't able to make up for what is, underneath it all, a mostly uninteresting composition. Likewise, the tiresome repetition of two chords on "Everything" quickly becomes tedious. And, over everything, the album is regrettably beset by a vocal attack that is, as often as not, noticeably out of tune. Bright spots do exist. The agile juxtaposition of pointed electric guitar and muted bass on "Outside" forms a perfect counterpart to the song's soaring, and pleasantly unpredictable, melody line. And "What It's Like" adds spot-on vocal work and perfectly placed violin embellishments to the song's pseudo-dissonant character to instill it with an almost hypnotic quality. All in all, Are You Sleeping, Love? is a pleasant enough piece of work nearly across the board. But despite its mostly agreeable musical and lyrical construction, the preponderance of overly nondescript material makes the second album a frustratingly inconsistent listen from start to finish.

3 tocks