Music
Press
"The often excellent and mostly well-executed The Gifted Curse is the work of musicians comfortable with creating no new thing under the sun. The album, self-released this past October, is sometimes deliberately referential and sometimes just unabashed about its influences. These influences include all of the important British rock bands of the '60s and some soul acts from the same era. So too, I hear Queen (especially on "Never Alone," which deserves your company), the Beach Boys, Big Star..."
"Recorded with a variety of musicians between 2000 and this past spring, The Gifted Curse is a get-back-to-where-you-once-belonged album and a sideman-announces-himself album. As the band's name suggests, Heavy Sleeper's music is muscular yet dreamy, power pop with actual power. The sha-la-la vocals and trips to falsettoland are countered with boom-boom-whap drumming and corpulent guitar tones. This is especially demonstrated by the album's first two cuts: "Home," a crunchy and tuneful love song, and "I'm With You," a harmonica- and sax-graced invocation to dance to the Motown beat in the Culture Club's Church of the Poisoned Mind."
-Dylan Hicks - City Pages
"The Gifted Curse is a purist’s power-pop album, a collection of swagger-heavy bone crunching rock that never forgets to fill the high end in with pleasant coos or sexy lead guitar fills."
"Herder’s monumental lead work, on record and in the live setting, proves integral to elevating Galang’s tunes to the level of truly classic. The Gifted Curse’s batch of 11 time-tested melodically rich tunes stands as inviolable auditory proof that regardless of musical trends or indie-hipster fads, one thing never gets old—songs." - Pulse of the Twin Cities
Honorable mention. - City Pages
The Gifted Curse comes out swinging with a bona fide arena anthem in the form of “Home.” One could be forgiven for expecting Heavy Sleeper to shift gears into more sedate terrain from there, but it turns out that “Home” is merely the first in a series of massive crescendo-laden guitar-snarling struts that blast forth from my speakers with a sense of urgency that’s got me by the throat. - Pulse of the Twin Cities
"Absolutely Not Lame`s type of power pop, varied in texture while always rocking, deliciously bruising band playing, high-octane vocals and exceptional guitar work. It`s also ripe to call this `headphone pop`. There`s a lot going on here and pretty much all of it works and it`s hard to find much fault"
- Not Lame
"I gotta give this one a big thumbs up." - Jam Records
Discography
Heavy Sleeper "The Gifted Curse" was self-released in October 2004 and broke into the CMJ Top 200 charting at #113.
Photos
Bio
Heavy Sleeper started as a recording project for Marcel Galang, organist of Minneapolis' veteran pop band The Hang Ups. With a fistful of recordings cut with his friends in the Hang Ups and Dearly backing him up, Galang then teamed up with some other old friends, drummer Matt Alexander and guitarist Drew Herder of Minneapolis power-poppers Arch Stanton in winter of 2003. For over a year the new group wrote, recorded, performed and bled together to become Heavy Sleeper. With the album completed in 2004, former Arch Stanton member Paul Jongeward became Heavy Sleeper's newest addition as bassist.
The eleven songs that comprise "The Gifted Curse" were recorded with Producer Bryan Hanna (The Waxwings, The Orange Peels, Papas Fritas). Opening with the rousing "Home," an infectious number that moves from beat to head-nodding beat with riffs and hooks galore, the pace quickens with the honky-tonk bounce of "I'm With You" and the spiky, pissed-off rave-up that is "Nothing New." The rest of the record brims with standouts such as "The Saddest Sound," a heartrending ballad and "Back to Me," an upbeat guitar-pop gem about weathering life's changes.
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