What’s the meaning of Dreams?
I’ve chased them all my life
Straight out of the wilds of Tampa, Florida, dark surf/post-punk trio Sleeping Pills announces a mysterious eight-track album for a darkening world: A Bend In Time. The release comes to us via the aptly-named Lurk Records.
Written and recorded during the height of the pandemic, this collection of swamp-goths (singer/guitarist Phil Taylor, guitarist Zack Strickland, and drummer Nate Irizarry) bottled up the apocalyptic anxiety of the collective with a series of eerie guitars, nihilistic lyrics and unsettling bass lines. Dwelling somewhere between The Damned, The Cramps, Bauhaus, and Dick Dale, this is the perfect album to blare on a (nighttime) beach goth holiday. Taylor’s crooning baritone offsets the sinister vibe perfectly.
“Don’t Turn Back” gets topped off with a melting solo; “What Lies Beyond” drips with the wails of gloomy synths and cold riffs. “Hole In the Heart” slows the pace as Fishwife’s Kate Magruder duets with Taylor in a Western-tinged nod to Lee Hazlewood. With “Burning Ember”, Sleeping Pills bring a slice of hypnotic surf-goth, which finds Taylor declaring, “you are my burning ember, my love for you burns forever.”
“Endless Maze deals with our neverending confusion over life’s daily struggles built around a Joy Division meets disco vibe,” the band says about their standout track. “275 is a road rocker about jumping on the highway, leaving one’s problems behind to disintegrate. “Spinning Upside Down” is a passionate track about a world gone mad, ending things on an upbeat notion of future change and action.”
Listen to A Bend in Time below:
Sleeping Pills’ A Bend in Time is out now.
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