Sleep and Release, the second album from beardy Scots avant-rockers Aereogramme, finds their titanic dynamic stretching into new realms of beautiful expansiveness. This band walk a somewhat dangerous path: melding dreamy symphonic rock into passages of brittle electronica and coruscating death-metal, Aereogramme make an excessively complex music that's saved only from the precipice of prog by its well-paced climaxes and genuinely emotive hooks. But it's the sensitive production that makes the sprawling complexity of Sleep And Release a joy. Aerogramme have clearly taken a cue from the The Delgados, their Chemikal Underground label bosses: the glorious likes of "Black Path" and "Older" blossom with the kind of breathtaking sonic fullness that elevated albums like The Great Eastern to the status of minor indie-rock classics. If there's one irritation here, it's that a couple of tracks pay homage a little too explicitly: the thrumming bass-line of "Indiscretion # 243" so clearly apes the style of Kim Deal that you're virtually outraged on her behalf and the martial rhythms and sombre violin laments of the unnamed final track suggest more than a passing knowledge of the work of Godspeed You Black Emperor. Still, the final result is a powerful album that confirms the name Chemikal Underground as an enduring hallmark of quality.--Louis Pattison
Aereogramme
Sleep and Release
[Matador; 2003]
Rating: 8.5
Get ready, brothers and sisters and gender-assignees in the void, for a barrage of hyperbolic hypotheses: What if Radiohead got guitar-happy with U2-ish heft? What if The Flaming Lips stopped making nerd anthems for interplanetary Olympics? What if Mercury Rev included a post-Pixies scream-blast for every wince-worthy wuss-warble? What if Mogwai hired a vocalist who sounded like an imp cowering in an attic? What if Sigur Ros were a rock band already? What if Built to Spill were from Glasgow? What if Weezer and Bjork hopped in the same teleporter and got blended into a grotesque, mood-disordered Brundlefly act?
Without an inkling of conscious mimicry, Aereogramme are almost the answer to these questions on their revelatory, if somehow pompous, sophomore release, a thunder-bunny of a long-player with ambition rivaling that of their fellow murderous Scot, Macbeth. In fact, they so gracefully shift from lilt to conflagration that you wish they'd team up with certain fellow countrymen to form the ominous low-end supergroup Belle & The Bastards. I don't want to contribute to the way Aereogramme got typecast as a two-trick pony based on A Story in White, because they cease to be quiet/loud dualists on Sleep and Release, despite the hibernation-and-catharsis connotations of its title. In fact, the listener feels like a Jurassic Park lab technician unable to chronicle a wayward experiment's swift evolution; Aereogramme lurches spastically from dated electronica (cough, industrial) to rock to folk to symphony to--
The band purportedly was inspired by dark DVDs they watched on tour, resulting in what the press kit calls the album's "deeply cinematic structure." Whatever. That sounds like the logic of the film Instinct (a pajamas-and-vodka classic if you haven't seen it), in which Anthony Hopkins watches apes and therefore takes on their attributes. It's best if you avoid frontman Craig B's non-album musings; the didact tends to speak in manifestos that make his fans imagine Ian MacKaye wanting to change the world by starting Smashing Pumpkins. All you need to know is that this disc is hugely impressive and brimming with old-fashioned passion so earnest it's embarrassing, though occasionally the serene moments feel a li'l ziplocked, like a staged public service announcement of undying love.
Don't be turned off by the radio-ready production: In less than four minutes, "Indiscretion #243" sprints from its introductory straight-outta-Doolittle bassline, into a jam that would inspire a Social Distortion air-guitar stance in a comatose nun, then it permutates into a R.E.M-Document/Green breakdown complete with Automatic for the People organ, then it goes choral (!), then metal again, then it becomes an ambient piece with the first of many fascinating spoken-word samples (the best of which are a hyperventilating evangelist and an answering machine message that begs, "Get in touch with me, please, please, I need your help"). Again, that's only the first song on a disc that intermittently sounds like four discs on shuffle, or a spliced talent/variety show at the coolest arena-themed bar in the world.
The optimism of the Fridmanniana can mask the despondent lyrics. At one point, Craig B sings, "It's time to follow the black path/ Come tomorrow, you won't laugh," and then he adds, arrhythmically and all muffled, as if it were a useless afterthought: "At love." Elsewhere he intones, "The reason we're all disfigured/ I'll say it again/ The reason we're all disappointed/ Is innocence lost." These are the better moments on a record that at (orchestral) times can be cheesier than a mattress full of feta. But all is forgiven due to the sheer ass-kick that predominates the rest. This band can compete with collossae of the current heavy-vogue such as Isis or Queens of the Stone Age; cue up or download "No Really, Everything's Fine" right now and behold the guitars that reveal every cliched way that verbiage ("buzzsaw thud!") fails to convey the adrenal onslaught of expertly multitracked axe-abuse. This song's chunky explosions are the holy mother of fuckscum scraped from the charred frame of the Ford Abomination, the SUV whipped up specially for Satan.
Okay, so I'm the first to confess that "Yes" is Everclear-esque. Okay, so the unfortunate major-label grunge font on the cover does not do justice to a band who have upstaged their whole discography, even their Fukd-series disc for Chemikal Underground. Okay, so "A Winter's Discord", in title and execution, is awful Queensrychian. Okay, so the untitled finale is Mogwai doing a Braveheart score before it ends in a moist sizzle that suggests electric rain. Okay, so cynics will not get caught up in Aereogramme's sweep. But the bold remainder of you, I envy. You're about to witness the aural equivalent of time-lapse tide changes. You're about to see where purgation and authenticity meet manipulation and spectacle. I wish I could be you, hearing this CD for the first time, hosting the inner battle: "Yo, this stuff's belabored." "Yo, this stuff's beautiful." "Yo, this stuff's pretentious." "Yo, this stuff's awesome."
-William Bowers, March 04, 2003
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Review by Charles Spano
On Sleep and Release, Aereogramme combines abrasive guitars, feedback, and distorted vocals into rock that, in its own way, is as crunchy and dynamic as Weezer, though as decidedly outsider as Mogwai. "Indiscretion #243" is a beautiful way to start an album: a mash of assaulting guitars, moaning keys, a strange hymnal chorus, and enough exploding melodicism to render their debut meek by comparison. From there, the band soars with Sigur Ros grandeur-gone-folk-rock (the string-laden "Black Path"), subtle electro-psychedelia (the glitchy and somber "A Simple Process of Elimination"), and slinky post-rock that would find a kindred spirit in the 90 Day Men ("No Really, Everything's Fine"). What sets these Scots apart, though, from their massive contemporaries (like Godspeed You Black Emperor! or Mogwai) is their ability to unleash simple and sunny pop hooks, and then pile layers on top of them, like on "Wood." Of course as soon as the song catches your attention with these grooves, the band totally destroys them, clearing the table in one fell swoop of epic heavy metal. Then they come back to the pop. It's brilliant and, in a word, riveting.
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