#2086 Sleeping Beauties - Sleeping Beauties

Rock and roll's a shark that's gotta keep moving - gotta be new and sincere to stay alive // rock and roll's an endless parade of reinvention and rediscovery and retread that can't escape its roots without becoming something unknown and unlike.

The bands that give me hope: its those few bands that know how to rip off with their own righteous fury, that truly do that trick of learning their favorite songs and making them their own, and flying that momentum into some burning atmospheric exit. There's no small amount of that spark here.

These kids rip through it. They have that raucous frustration, that sneering cocked eye at the history, that need to be alive in this moment on that trail of noise that goes down and down.

That romantic desolation of The Hold Steady, that hot heat into crystallized beauty of Fucked Up, that ragged hell of the Pixies, the loose-limbed fuckit of the Stones and the Stooges, filtered though the rambling stagger of The Men and the shambling ramble of the immortal Exploding Hearts.

The Men - desperately unappreciated band, that's where you start here - that rambling attack from every angle, but Sleeping Beauties bring this staggering punk rock slobbering that takes it all into a wildeyed headbutt.


And for every nod back to Sympathy woo woo's and Addicted to Love//Drugs, there's a awwwcmonman-fuckallthat. Nothing static, nothing expected -- Merchants of Glue escalates to raving, Slumber Party descends into melancholy and back with a vengeance; and 50's Haircut / Gold Shoes, fuck, jesus christ. Song of the year maybe. The whole album's on drugs, never knowing when its going to slip into a dirge or flip the fuck out, and you're bracing yourself until the inevitable gutterfuck wakeup.

What a brilliant, sloppy, meltdown of a record, packed with manic live energy, as if happening on accident before your eyes, like a slash of broken glass might dash you to the emergency room or worse at any moment, but with this highwire precision that sticks every landing, all through the filter of every band that said this -- all this -- it can fuckin burn -- let's party and see who's left 4.5/5