Tulipomania - Dreaming of Sleep (Sursumcorda Records)

Any band named after such a strange and singular historical event as the collapse of the 17th-century Dutch tulip market will be a band whose interest and inspiration come from unexpected and extraordinary sources. And so it is with Tulipomania, a band variously described as cult synth punks, glam-leaning, post-punk, art-rock, and muscular chamber pop (not another one, I hear you cry) and comprised of Tom Murray and Cheryl Gelover.

Getting a handle on Tulipomania is challenging; not only has their music varied from album to album, but their albums sonic journey shifts from track to track, and their songs sometimes even evolve unexpectedly from bar to bar. What unites their sonic escapades is a sense of adventure, the avant-garde, and artistic expression beyond merely a desire to make music, fit in, and “shift units,” as the saying goes. Dreaming of Sleep, their lates and fifth long-player, feels more like a sonic quest or an exorcism of ideas than anything remotely connected with comfort zones, expectations, and musical zeitgeists.

Kicking off with the single, “You Had To Be There,” feels like the perfect way to enter their world; no advanced warning, no gentle immersion, it is a straight into the gnashing jaws of their industrial synths, their off-kilter beats and Tom Murray’s, Fergal Sharkey-esque vibrant and vibrating tenor vocals.

And so through nine more equally unique and non-conforming art attacks. “Do You Remember” is weirdly anthemic and wonderfully challenging, giving the listener the sense of being under the spotlight for intense questioning as weird sonic landscapes ebb and flow on the back wall of the bunker. “Then And Only Then” is slow and slinky, “Blank-Gone It’s Gone” is odd and industrial, coming in waves and feeling like some drug-infused trip, part mind-expanding and oddly psychedelic, part paranoid and bleak, and “It’s About Time” is stark and startling.

I’ve used many descriptive words above, some of my most treasured actually, many that are rarely found side by side in the same review. Still, even those aren’t enough to adequately describe what Tulipomania is all about and the experience of listening to Dreaming of Sleep. After all, if writing about music is, as they say, like dancing about architecture, that is, a futile gesture, then the architecture in question here is brutalist, angular, oppressive, claustrophobic, yet adventurous, challenging, exotic, enlightening and forward-thinking. How do you put all that into words in one short, easily absorbed sentence?

Oh, look, I think I just did.

Spotify
You Had To Be There
Bandcamp
Spotify
Album order