What’s in a name? Well, in the case of Awake & Dreaming, quite a lot. It not only reflects co-founder and co-songwriter Sasha Kristoff’s experiences living with a condition that makes those two opposing states her daily reality, but also hints at the glorious exploration of duality in their songs. And if there is an overarching theme to their debut album, Inevitable, it centres, more than anything, on how we stay real in a world designed to numb the human condition, exploring big ideas by asking poignant questions. Questions such as: Why do we feel isolated in a world where we are so irrevocably connected? Where do we find hope in a society that increasingly scares us? How do we experience love after loss?
If opener ‘I U Me’ ebbs and flows between dream-pop delicacy and swathes of shoegazing walls of guitar, ‘Rewire’ that follows echoes the duality of the album’s lyrics as it shifts from gloriously jagged alt-rock to neo-classical swathes of sound. Then ‘Old Ghosts’ echoes a glorious trip-hop groove as it wanders indie-folk paths and ambient byways. All that in the first three songs!
‘Cold Shoulder’ is woven of barbed guitar riffs and tumbling drums, brooding bass and lush vocals, dreamlike and dramatic, dark and delicious: ‘Can’t Sleep’ gives itself plenty of space for all manner of other latent sonics to pool and percolate between the notes, for atmospheres and anticipations to rise in the breath between the words – chiming pianos, pulsing bass motifs, sonic drifts, acoustic reveries.
And finally, ‘Event Horizon’ feels like the natural meeting point of a 50s chanson singer and futuristic soundscaping, a glimpse of the sonic shape of things to come described in more familiar sonic language.
A run of excellent singles has signposted that something special was on its way, but I didn’t expect to fall this hard for this beguiling debut. Perhaps, if you will excuse me the sort of obvious pun that I was forced to come up with in my days in the trenches of local newspaper journalism, it was Inevitable!
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