Songs For The Sleepwalkers
Our rehearsed spontaneous reactions

THE REVIEW

From Sweden, Songs For The Sleepwalkers is a band whose music reflects the moods of Scandinavian landscapes: the debut album "Our rehearsed spontaneous reactions" is a little journey that goes from cold winter nights to sunny summer days, passing through an autumn painted in red-orange hues.

The album is not very long (just over 20 minutes), but in this case (and in this genre) the short duration of the entire record and the songs themselves can be considered more of an asset than a drawback: better to craft a relatively short album than risk becoming repetitive and boring in the long run.

The tracks are all very simple, mainly built on vocals and acoustic guitar, with some scattered embellishments that have a great impact (cello, electric guitars, percussion...), and although they sound very cohesive, each piece dares to peek into some different genres: The opener "Icarus Falling" presents itself as a piece in Elliott Smith / Nick Drake style, then lets the guitars and the structure of the song die into a soundscape reminiscent of Sigur Rós. The indie-folk flavor of "Down The Line" and its 3/4 meter makes room for the slightly more rock approach of "We Are Still Here" (in which electric guitars dominate the arrangement) and the wall of sound of electronic melodies in "Awake," a song that splits the album in half, only to bring the acoustic guitars back to the forefront with "Tell me how" and the evocative "Asleep," the only instrumental track on the record. The nocturnal atmospheres encountered so far give way to the brightness of "Set the world on fire" and its beautiful string melodies, which give a 60s pop feel to the song. The album closes with the stark and lo-fi ballad "What If I do," reminiscent of artists like The Tallest Man on Earth or Devendra Banhart.

"Our Rehearsed Spontaneous Reactions" is an album that works much better if listened to in one go, almost as if it were a single long song with various chapters. The ideas and concepts are interesting, and the advantages of this work (its short duration, dreamy nature, and sometimes the arrangements and minimal instrumentation) are at the same time also its drawbacks, depending on the perspective. Listen to it here.