No Way Out
I sleep like a psychopath. Various partners have commented on my thrashing, mumbling, creepy open eyes, litany of accents and loud snoring. Twice I’ve woken up next to someone immediately diagnosing me with sleep apnea and offering to make me a special herbal tea to quell my sleep demons. It doesn’t matter if I’ve been drinking, my sleep habits are all the same and I tend to remember my dreams just as often if I go to sleep pissed or sober. My defence when I’m mocked for this is that I can’t control my unconscious self, essentially that I become possessed and that you can’t blame Regan that father Karras launched himself down the steps.
Just a Lie, You’re Fucked Up, Fire-Engine
I often remember my dreams. They are long distorted plots ending in desperate calls from the spirit world demanding a pound of mental flesh in exchange for entrance into their night-time realm. Most times when I nap on a couch I wake up with a jolt because I’d been hit by a train, the same fucking one the colour and pattern of the thorax of a wasp bearing down on me in the middle of a sunny day. I hate that fucking train and the mad man driving it demanding I wake up and be productive, I bet he’s a cunt to work for.
It Makes Me Sick, Ghosts, Broken Arrow
I was once trapped in a dream. I had believed I woke up after a nightmare and walked around my apartment shaken for enduring it when the sky instantly turned pitch black due to storm clouds and I felt what I later found out was sleep paralysis for the first time. I stumbled to band practice unsure of my entire reality and ended up babbling something about ‘being rattled’ by a nap that day to concerned band mates. This was the first time this shit spilled over into reality and became the king spirit, the barbarians had stormed the gate and were burning our huts and slaughtering our cows. It took me about a week to convince myself I was living in reality when awake. I was living the not very well explained doomsday concept of Inception (omg so many plot holes, and the last Batman had them too! Therefore they are bad movies).
Don’t Fear, Crazy For You
Other dreams take the form of premonitions. A few times I have sent an early morning text message or made a phone call to someone I dreamt needed help. These premonitions never come true (thank Christ) and I now chalk them up to a form of spirit torture. These bastards hold my friends hostage during the night and force me to put a bowie knife between my teeth and enter the jungle to hack them out of a bamboo cage during the day. Shamans battle their own demons and try to scare off yours; they don’t see the future because it doesn’t exist.
Action, Tubekiller, Stroke
People read too much into dreams (some morons even devote entire blog posts on the internet to them) so I don’t take these as a gauge of mental health. On the cover of this LP is a cat, the silent companion to humans, equally an omen of hope and misfortune to the superstitious. My dreams are a companion only speaking to me, they can cross my path and make me change my direction or I can completely ignore them and move through my day. Cats are fine, just don’t devote your life to every single one you come across.
Straight forward review: I hate to describe this album as dreamy because that’s a lazy music cliché for something mildly reverb-y and with distant sounding vocals but fuck it, trying to avoid all cliché is how you end up as a pitchfork writer endlessly contorting yourself in an effort to lick your own taint. I thought the only music coming out of Finland was hardcore and they left the softer rock/goth revival to the Swedes but this record has all the good points of the pop rock of the new goth wave (is that a term? Fuck it, it is now) while keeping it dirty and sounding like it was recorded in a garage. I wish this thing had an insert with some lyrics because they are muffled and accented but the song titles and emotion behind it intrigues me. Oh ya it’s a band of four girls, because that is something you have to point out because people are dumb and prejudiced (also I like it when ladies sing). Re-issued by P. Trash on yellow wax.
Hope Subsides 