Album Review: Sleepersound – My Own Dead Love

Milwaukee’s Sleepersound has just released My Own Dead Love, and the album marks a departure – an expansion, actually – from the sound on its earlier albums, specifically In Medias Res from 2018 and 2021’s Idle Voices. Where those records dealt primarily in a sort of shoegaze style, the new record takes that approach and moved outward in multiple directions.

The vinyl record opens with the vocal-forward “Let’s Play Wolves,” a spare and breathy track. The majestic and alluring “Tread Down” has a lovely, jangling feel redolent of a less complex track from The Church. “Certain Beasts” is more closely connected to the sound and feel of Sleepersound’s earlier efforts, with a gauzy and shimmering sonic texture wed to a simple and deliberately-paced melody. “Ni Siquiera Tu” begins with a jazzy, breakbeat-flavored percussion patter, adds some minor-key guitar picking and a sonorous ball figure. The song’s plaintive and echo-laden vocal gives the track a foggy-windowed, melancholy air.

Side two’s “Embers” strips away all the echo for an up-close-and-personal arrangement reminiscent (in the best possible way) of ‘80s alternarock like The Cure. “Falling Dream” moves the listener back toward shoegazeland, but builds upon an inviting drum part and ghostly vocals. Its title notwithstanding, “Soma” is in fact a not-especially-dreamy instrumental track that hints of danger. As it unfolds, the song reveals soaring guitar dialogue. The brief “The Flesh” is dark, atmospheric and eerie, as spare as it is spooky and dissonant. The album’s closing cut, “Living Ancestor” combines most all of the preceding textures into a thing of beauty, a track that showcases all of Sleepersound’s musical virtues in a single track. The song’s treated vocal is a wonderful addition to the arrangement. It’s a fine way to end an album, and leaves me fascinated to stay tuned and see (hear) where this group goes next.