Sleepwalker

While also using some existing home recordings, New Jersey bedroom recordist/singer/songwriter/guitarist Leslie Bear, who goes by the stage pseudonym Long Beard, made the voyage to the studio and engaged producer/engineer Chris Daly to help prepare her debut long-player, Sleepwalker. An apt title for an introspective, hazy, sinuous dream pop creation built on a foundation of Bear's graceful guitar work, its sound is rounded out by contributions from drummer Stefan Koekemoer and bassmen Devin Silvers and Tom Christie. In a seeming dream pop cliche, her ethereal vocals haunt the echo-filled recording, but Sleepwalker is far from routine, offering poignancy in both instrumental creations that achieve poise more than noise, and complementary lyrics that dwell on muddled temporal states like memory, fluttering moths in the dark-light, the transformation into young adulthood ("Can't wait till class is over/We've been here forever and ever"), and the agony of loss ("Lost my love to a salty sea/How I wished it would swallow me/The crumbs on his fingers smell of smoke/Days of heaven in a room too cold"). Romantic in spirit throughout the record, the pretty "Porch" woos with rhythmic-melodic guitar lines that mingle with a less distinct vocal melody ("Summer rain brings your voice to my ear"). The more meandering, attack-and-decay-concerned "Moths" tells of watching the flying creatures against the moonlight and continued resistance to living in the moment: "Summer time/I know why you still wear your winter coat/Don't want to grow." "Summer Fall" is a fuzzier, industrial-sounding piece with revving and clanking, still restrained and fitting the tonality of the album, with Bear's howling vocals shimmering along with (drumless) warbling, looped effects. Never a singalong type of work though demurely melodic at heart, Sleepwalker has an intimacy that reaches through its atmosphere to deliver a decidedly human essence. ~ Marcy Donelson