Spyglass - Wake Up, Sleepyhead - CD Review by Dave Liljengren

As if it were a blushing bride, ready to walk down the last aisle of singleness into the coupling bands of holy matrimony, Wake Up, Sleepyhead, has been equipped with something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. This new album from Spyglass contains three "old" songs which previously appeared on the band's debut ep and six "new" tracks. The "borrowed" something comes in the form of "Mother," a John Lennon cover, and the enormously "blue" something comes in the lyrics to "Marleenken," an inconsolably sad tale of fratricide and stew meat cannibalism which is so effectively downbeat in its mournful thrust that it would send Anton Chekhov scrambling for Prozac.

The fact that "Marleenken" comes off as a sad song does not mean that it, or this disc, should be avoided. The truth is quite the contrary. Art is never for the squeamish and the songs of Spyglass--"Marleenken" in particular-- reside on the shadowy slope where, if you listen closely, pop music pierces like art.

If you have yet to experience this Seattle quintet, you should know that their aesthetic strength has always radiated from their ability to give a vivid, motile sound to otherwise dark and immobilizing states of mind. The band's 1999 eponymous debut was long on textures, but not short on content. Layers of soaring, diaphanous, guitars teased the earthy, melancholy vocals of singer Barbara Trentalange through five songs, producing soundscapes that were both lighter than air and heavier than Bob Dylan at his most abjectly poetic. Wake Up, Sleepyhead expands on the timid successes of the previous work, making the sonic highs higher and the emotive lows lower. As such it is evidence of the band's growing mastery of studiocraft and a strong first step in the right direction.

Orchestrally-aspiring shoegazers whose love for the triste sound of e-bow excited guitar strings seemingly knows no bounds, Spyglass has been blessed with two fine guitarists and a bona fide rock rhythm section in addition to Trentalange. The bass playing of Clay Martin and the drumming of Barry Shaw drive "Spell," a hypnotic, machine-driven, ode to womanhood which is the disc's best track. The always mellifluous twin-guitar teaming of David Einmo and John Roth add punch, spice, fury or reprieve, whatever the situation calls for, to adventurously harsh new tunes like "See Jack Run" and "Loss" or sweet, old, reassurring favorites like "Sleepyhead" or "Sun Song." "Mother," the John Lennon cover, allows Trentalange the opportunity to stretch her range and don the cigarette-marred coloratura of a gin-soaked blues mama as she storms her way, note by pointed note, heartstring by tensed heartstring, to the tune's gripping denouement of filial finality.

Wake Up, Sleepyhead has nine strong songs with nary a clinker among them. On this disc, Spyglass displays a depth to their sound which suggests that, when they are at their best, their work can have more meaning than is usually ascribed to pop music. They have also demonstrated that they can expand their aesthetic vision and adapt their talents to newer and more ambitious sounds. It wouldn't be reasonable to ask any more from a band's first full-length disc.

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