Sleep Station - After The War (CD)
Sound:
B Music: B
Ah,
the thematically-linked Concept Album. It's
not every day that one of these suckers comes across my desk, so I treasure
every opportunity I get to sift through the vision of some wannabe mad genius. I know because I used to be like that. Full disclosure: once I recorded and released
a Concept Album. It's impossible to
find, but I'll tell you about it. It's
the story of a boy named Nostalgia, his love for an ugly candy raver named
Reality, and the immense pig that lords over the junkyard in which they live. Not exactly the Beach Boys' Smile, but then again what is?
Sleep
Station's After The War is a Concept
Album about being full of love and yet being sent to kill and perhaps die in
the hell that is WW II. It's the
follow-up to their Von Cosel EP, a
Concept Mini-Album about a doctor who falls in love with a deceased TB patient,
which is the follow-up to Hang In There
Charlie, another Concept Album about being an astronaut who has been abandoned
by Mission Control and left to die in space. That is the follow up Runaway Elba-1, which is about blah blah blah, which is the
follow-up to blah blah blah which is about blort deblort.
After The War has
four or five great songs, overall. "Waiting",
track five, really shines, as does track eight, "Burden To You". I guess
this is not a Concept Album about one man's struggle, because "Burden To You" calls out for a girl
named Alison, while "Caroline,
London 1940" contains the line "My soul is yours and mine, and I
love you Caroline". Or else it is
about one man's struggle and this cat has an awful lot of explaining to do. "A
Final Prayer 2" aka "A
Soldier To His Son" is the touching ode to a child who's being left
behind.
While
there is no weak track, except for some painful interludes, most of After The War suffers from the sameness
of timbre. You might call it
consistency, I might term it monotony. It's
no Smile, but that's okay, because
judging from the sound of this album, Sleep Station's favorite Beach Boys album
is not Smile, but Sunflower. You can hear the influence on "Waiting" and "With You Now", among other tracks,
in the warmth and cozy-ness of sound. This album has some high points, but gets
bogged down real quick. Take it from
somebody who's been there.
- Michael J. Farmer
