Lightsleeper
http://www.lightsleeper.net

styles: slow-core, soft acoustic guitar lo-fi
others: Low, R.E.M, Yo La Tengo

Light Sleeper
Shmat, 2003
rating: 3/5
reviewer: husky


Tender were those moments that I held my first acoustic guitar. I learned a few generic chords; the C major, G major, A, and E minor. I would sit for hours and try to learn some of the "classics." With my taste in music back then, I considered Oasis’ "Wonderwall" and The Beatles’ "Ob-la-di-Ob-la-da" as such. Logically, I got bored of these "classics" and decided to write my own songs. Taken my current age at the time, most of these songs had to do with subjects such as acceptance, finding the right friends, falling in love, and many other problems that are now laughable fragments of the past. On returning home from school, I took my guitar and wrote songs that, in retrospect, could be described as pretty awful. Still, the experience of using a guitar to comfort myself certainly helped me through those teenage years.

That same feeling of nurture shines through the debut record of LA-based Light Sleeper. Softly strummed acoustic guitar, strange surreal lyrics (usually without a clear defined subject), and the warm, hush vocals of Yvonne Ng and Richard Crang, who bring Low’s Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker to mind. On its best moments, it feels like Light Sleeper is playing right beside your bed, lulling you into sleep with a song such as "Come On Baby."

In spite of that, what seems to be lacking from Light Sleeper is some underlying tension. Compared to the previously mentioned Low, Light Sleeper sounds uninspired and maybe even a little boring, while Low uses the same minimalist approach to create something that does satisfy. I’m aware that creating a sound that rises above the standard with only minimal means is already quite a challenge, because adding elements to a song is certainly easier than subtracting them. However, I do believe that an underlying tension is an essential element of this musical style, and Light Sleepers' sound stays too much on the surface to have any conspicuous tension. So it seems Light Sleeper will unlikely have much lasting value in this already glutted music style.

1. Febrile in February
2. Pop Song
3. Melting Point
4. Spellbound
5. Come on Baby 
6. Go
7. Indian Giver
8. Leonid Sky
9. Where's My Happy Ending?