Sleep Station

Sleep Station
After the War
Eyeball Records


Sort of.

      That's the one phrase I keep using over and over again as I describe Sleep Station to my friends. For what they do and how they do it, this seems to be the best way I can talk about their music, in short, once the details surface there is nothing 'sort of' about them.

      What Sleep Station does to create their albums is sort of mind blowing. How in touch their lyrics are with the subject matter is sort of brilliant. The lengths they will go to make the finished product as close to their muse as possible is sort of obsessive. If you've never heard of these guys then this is about as much of a precursor as you will need to understand what all is going on here. Now onto their fifth release (fourth full-length album), the band's latest success, After the War, will be released on May 17th.

      Explanation time. All of Sleep Station's musical releases have been based around a story. The lyrics and meanings of the songs are coming out of characters within these stories. It's like a dramatic musical that you watch with the curtain closed. The stories aren't just a loose idea that Sleep Station's lyricist/frontman Dave Debiak decides to work around, they are thought-out, complex, works that have as much detail as they do charisma. The band's website (www.sleep-station.com) has a complete account of each album's story and it is near impossible to deny wanting every album after reading of its inspiration. Questions of how they can pull it off immediately flood the mind with the summations working as well as any movie trailer.

      So what makes everything so, 'sort of?' On After the War there is no point where you feel like Sleep Station is trying to hard to make you feel the story or their theme and believe me, they go to graphic extremes in taking you there. Their smooth pop textures remind me of Wilco, Marcy Playground, and even Coldplay at times. When explaining how far off of the beaten path this band is in terms of how they are creating albums, one would expect to hear music like nothing that they ever heard before. I can't really say that's true, lyrics excluded obviously. Sleep Station is making movies out of these albums, yes- but they aren't trying to bring back 3-D. These songs sit very comfortably amongst the best pop music that I've heard. Great harmonies, great instrumentation, and excellent production make viewing their latest release a pure pleasure.



      After the War is a collection of tunes in 17 tracks that take a listener through the trials and tribulations of World War II. From the soldier and his girl to the soldier and his son, you get a sense that not all of the words spoken here are meant to be viewed as direct dialogue. There is a considerable amount of longing in many of these tunes, giving the impression that these characters are saying things they only wish they'd gotten a chance to in person. What seems like a cut and dry, 'I love you' turns into a heart-wrenching gaze towards a missile-filled sky as the message flies to the night in hopes that its recipient will be laying safely asleep thousands of miles away.

      All of the emotions of war are here. The fear, the resentment, the worry, the counted blessings, and the promising hope of a better future make more than cameos as faceless characters plead their respective cases to one another, attempting to put each other at ease. It is terribly hard to stop listening to an album like After the War because Sleep Station is giving you so much. Between their prime musicianship and engaging lyrics, you also find haunting sounds of war and struggle wrapped around several moments where 'found sounds' directly from war-era 40's are infused as well. One touching instance is a soldier's letter home to his girlfriend read out loud in all of its crackled glory. Somehow still, this is just the beginning of this particular record's authenticity.

      Sleep Station gathered as much equipment from the 1940's as possible for use in recording. Using amps, microphones, and some recording gadgetry of the period, the result is nothing less than pristine. The quality does not suffer once from these tools, now viewed as archaic by modern standards. The work of Sleep Station becomes more understood and more enjoyable as you learn more and more about what these gentlemen are doing to put their stamp on each of their creations. Metteur` en scene this band is not.

      So do these songs stand on their own two feet? Just because they have this great concept and go to great lengths to make it authentic, are the songs something to be enjoyed as music and not just literature? Yes, 100%! In an exercise that I’ll knight, “Pop Restraint” they get the blue ribbon and the trophy. Maybe it’s because they have been together through four albums and an EP, maybe they are just smart musicians, but they have avoided all of the idiosyncrancies and idioms that are poisoning - onetimesone.com

Sleep Station
After the War
Eyeball
2004
{9}


Headed by the narrative-minded David Debiak and having previously written the score to a film that never existed in Hang in There Charlie, Sleep Station’s newest work is the kind of thematically cogent album of which Hemingway would be proud.

After the War, an alt-country tour-de-force, wavers between earnest, heartfelt love songs and combat-tinged sample-based interludes, forging, against all odds, an album that is stunningly seamless.

“Caroline, London 1940”, a song about a man hopelessly in love in the midst of a world at war, is a masterpiece. The love narrative is told lyrically (“Maybe the smoke has went away with the guns / I see the sun / Everything looks strange / Nothing will ever be the same again and / I see the sun / I feel it touch my face, I pray that there is change and someday / We will walk away, Caroline”) while the impending threat of war is conveyed musically, mostly via a relentless drum beat.

Sounding a lot like Beck Hanson circa Sea Change, Debiak invokes the perspective of a soldier’s wife on “Waiting” when he sings, “Evening changes / Voices so strange inside our home / I have stayed inside all alone / Time has never felt this long / But it doesn’t mean you’re gone / Waiting here for you to arrive”.

After The War is an album filled with emotion and yet remarkably free of melodrama. For those of us who don’t think a love story requires an exotic backdrop to be poignant, Sleep Station gratefully declines to employ its theme as a crutch. These songs stand on their own as odes that just so happen to take place before the backdrop of strife. Were these same human dramas enacted in present day Manhattan, for example, they’d bear just as much emotional weight.

On the terrific “Burden to You”, Debiak takes on the point-of-view of a deceased soldier commenting on his widow’s post-war life. “Allison,” he sings, “well I’m at a loss / Allison, baby I got caught spinning in circles / I could not get off / This whole world is open to you / Someday you will see it through”.

The acoustic guitar work throughout After the War sounds as though it’s hitched at the waist with the vocal work, preserving the kind of intimacy that defined early American folk (and, later, country) songs.

On “Silver in the Sun”, Sleep Station addresses war most directly, singing from the perspective of a fighter pilot struggling with the levity of his actions. “I can make mistakes / I am just human / And out of place”.

“With You Now” is about surviving the war and going back home to a woman who can’t begin to fathom the rift that now exists between she and her husband. Here Debiak’s voice reminds one of Roger Waters’ on “Wish You Were Here”. Subtle use of a heavily delayed electric guitar and slick drum and bass make this track a standout.

The production/engineering here is delicate and unobtrusive. And, fortunately, all the tracks sound as though they were cut in one flawless session. One flawless session in the 1940s: Sleep Station chose to record After the War using WWII era equipment, insofar as possible. According to Debiak, "We actually recorded a good portion on…ribbon and mushroom microphones and a few old amps. It was amazing that it all worked as well as it did. The end result sounds better than most of what we have access to today."

From the cover art, to the interludes, to the consistency of the songs, After the War manages to transport us to another time and place. Exotic? Yes. Universal? Absolutely - stylusmagazine.com

Despite any claims the Bush administration has made, we are in a war. In fact, the current state feels more like war than the Kuwaiti "liberation" ever did, what with the senselessness, the confused heroism and the overwhelming politic that claims lives. Sleep Station’s appropriately titled After the War makes a analogous statement – it is a brave concept album about wars past, deep feelings and stinging parallels that is truly more poignant and complex in retrospect. 

Using as much recording and sound equipment as they could find from the World War II era, there is at once an air of authenticity; this sentiment is soon multiplied as we follow the entangled life stories of several soldiers, brought together and separated by the inevitability of battle.

After the War is as bravely grand in scale as it is passionately intimate; it succeeds from both perspectives.

The sound of the album is of great contrast to its initiative. It blends self-described "70s AM gold" with such deep themes, and is at first perplexing, but entirely effective. The title track is downright friendly sounding, hook-filled like a reduction of "Mr. Bojangles", and easily as retro radio-friendly.

"Caroline, London 1940" is unashamed of its pop rock roots, swelling happily despite the homesick lyrics and sighing backdrop. It nearly collapses in places, but continually picks itself up – a sly nod to the continual efforts of the trying troops. The disparity definitely raises an eyebrow, but places them squarely between genius contemporaries like The Decemberists or Neutral Milk Hotel in that regard. You may never have thought that singing about these subject matters would come off in such a carefree manner, but this is an affair driven by passion.

"Waiting" is our first taste at the crushing, disillusioned strain hiding within the subtext, a heartbroken ballad with a wallowing country guitar and the sincerity of David Debiak’s bell-clear vocals. If taken out of the framework of the album, the track could pass as a cheesy 70s number and be just as enjoyable, but in After the War, it lacks sarcasm. There is something very pure and innocent about these tracks, and it works well with the sympathy we feel through narration.

Songs roll on in similar fashion, lazily tossing about poppy throwbacks amid dusty period recreations and painful story arcs. The sublime intricacy of the album is constantly pitted against the ease and relatively benign temper of the songs themselves.

It is a truly smart album; it plays on its own dynamic, and tugs emotionally at every juncture. When the tattered hymn of "All that Remains" gives a solemn salute to all things lost, it bruises all the more in contrast to its carefree surroundings. The final note of "Goodbye to the Moon" could not be better played, a hopeful yet spare ballad that is as much about death as fulfillment, it’s difficult to hold back a tear… and how many AM Gold tracks can accomplish such a feat? Clearly, it shows its magnitude as a whole, and humbly outshines many others in the process.
- lostatsea.net

I’m a crier. Girls. Movies. Life. Hell, I’ll cry for all three at once. There’s something beautiful about love and living depicted with such power that makes those tears perfect.

That’s what makes movies magic -- visions of life, so large, looming above you and with the capacity to create a physical response to psychological emotion. It’s all-encompassing. The sheer enormity of the silver screen, both literally and emotionally, is hard to ignore. Paintings are beautiful but essentially introspective realization. Television can’t match movies for all its sensationalism. Music? Only gets two ears.

Use them well. Sleep Station creates music for the eyes and the whole of human experience; After The War is a silver screen for your inner lobes. It is the story of a solider sent off to fight in World War II. It is a testament of love, letters written through the terror of battle and sent in earnest to a waiting heart. It is the tragedy of death. After The War is an epic of the Hollywood variety masquerading in shrinkwrap and some liner notes.

Like masters of any visual art, context is key. To match the WWII period, on many tracks Sleep Station employed the use of 1940s-era sound equipment to transport listeners. This is a crucial decision. Music, as performed, would be essentially unaltered by a choice in recording method. A listener, however, would find quite the difference. It is a deliberate nod to the importance of method in crafting art. It is the subtle line between telling a story and recreating it for an audience.

There are few stories so timely to tell. To escape the daily newsblasts of terror and death, most lately torture, would be unthinkable. To address these issues in all manners of context is a continuous concern of news directors and an increasingly consolidated media. To address these images flashed in front of us on any personal, human level is nonexistent. Sleep Station, now, creates a voice for that anonymous, enigmatic soldier portrayed on television by the character of propaganda.

After The War begins with the flood of so many separate emotions that will play out over seventeen tracks. There is the sense of leaving on the album’s title track, “as I flew away I looked back just to see the ground/ Hopeless in my vision, I never had a chance to say ‘goodbye,’” and the love left down below, hinting simultaneously at the tragedy to follow, “I can see the grin that you always tried to hide/ You left it here for certain, in my heart where it would die.” Such reads the diary of a man sent to fight for his life, a fated man speaking from the grave through pages smothered in gunpowder.

There are the soft-spoken ballads as described above and further tender moments like “Burden To You” and “A Final Prayer 2,” the second lamenting in one particular tear-jerking moment, “I’m just a father who loves his boy/ I’ll fall from the sky/ I will sit and watch you run for a while…/ Just know that everything you do/ Will someday come back to you.” They are words not even written in the liner notes. They are not among the physical evidence remained to pay testament to this man’s life; no, they exist as offered to the sky in one last private moment. This is the intimacy of War, a glimpse rarely afforded.

The visions are enough to turn one sour. It happens in a single moment. For me, it was those words from “A Final Prayer” coupled with the drive and rolling contrast of “Caroline, London 1940” with the words, “They can take our lives/ But our souls are yours and mine.” Between the two songs, the context of love is given many forms – defiance, immortality, vulnerability, sadness and, among many others but most of all, between generations. If War does not bring tears to your eyes, then you are not listening.

Sleep Station has created the first great album of 2004. It has context, method, a cast and crew of creators. It has relevance. It has musical savvy. It has the potential to open minds.

It brings tears to my eyes. It is perfect.
- ekmag.com

SLEEP STATION

Sleep Station is a band married to content. Most of its records focus on specific themes or premises, with the band’s latest, After the War, inspired by WWII. We didn’t want to rain on the parade by mentioning similarly themed flukes from hacks like Neutral Milk Hotel or Pink Floyd (...Uh, yeah). But, we were curious to see what the thought process was.
ANSWERS by DAVID DEBIAK | PHOTO by MARC DEBIAK

How do you pick a theme for your records?
I get stuck on something and when it happens I just know it. It sort of possesses me.

Describe the theme behind After the War.
Every song is from a different person’s perspective. A few are from the same man’s perspective, and that is happening throughout the record, tying it together. I think the inspiration came from my grandfather and his generation, mixed in with what is going on today in the world.

Do you think of things cinematically while writing?
That’s exactly how it happens. I would love to make a movie—that is what inspired my first record. I was scoring a movie that never happened because of financial reasons, so I figured if I can’t make them I’ll just write the music for them, and then maybe someday I’ll get a budget.

Any themes you have yet to explore?
I started to write a record about the last two hours of Judas’ life, but I got preoccupied with something else. I may or may not revisit it.

Damn Mel Gibson, you so crazy.
I come from this town where, culturally, there is nothing going on. It allowed us to find our own way without being pushed in a certain direction. You are made a certain way and no matter where you are put physically your soul will search for where it needs to go. You just have to listen.
- Rockpile

A concept album about World War ll complete with ?Bridge Over the River Kwai" whistling seems about as stimulating as a fifth grade history class. Sleep Station not only pulls it off, but has created a remarkable pop album in the process. Predominantly the brainchild of lead vocalist/songwriter David Debiak, the key to the project's success is the songwriting. Each immaculately crafted track adds a component to the story, but also stands on its own. Sounding somewhat like The Monkees' Micky Dolenz in the Head days, Debiak, along with brother Jason and especially multi-instrumentalist Brad Paxton (who adds trumpet, celesta, piano and glockenspiel as well as guitar) has composed sensitive and generally bouncy tunes about a weighty issue. It's only when you inspect the lyrics that the war thread becomes noticeable. Elements of Matthew Sweet, Fountains of Wayne, The Posies and even early Pink Floyd and ELO combine in the thoughtful and moving Beatle-esque pop of highlights such as ?Come Back Again," ?After the War," ?A Soldier's Dream" and ?Silver in the Sun." Alternately chiming and charging guitars mesh with Debiak's memorable melodies and tight yet expansive production that emphasizes the melancholic songs. A few tracks of bridging sound effects such as ?The Final Story 1" interrupt the flow as they enhance the story, but also serve to connect the dots, importing an epic quality to this extraordinary release. Although it peters out slightly towards the end, this is an enjoyable, reflective and poignant treatise on the effects of war, not typically a topic that lends itself to durable pop music. It heralds Debiak as a major talent and leaves the terrific After the War as an indication that his best work might be ahead of him. ~ Hal Horowitz, All Music Guide - allmusic.com