Let’s meet the Irish dream-pop quintet Elastic Sleep…the band hails from Cork, and they released their Leave You 10″ EP today as a joint venture between the UK independent label Big Tea Records and Ireland’s FIFA Records. Elastic Sleep is not yet a year old, having formed back in June of 2013 after the band’s guitarist and vocalist Chris Somers had spent some time writing songs with the band’s lead singer Muireann. The two enlisted their fellow friends Ruairi on bass, Brendan on guitar, and Dan on drums, and the five musicians quickly got to work self-recording songs like their cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “You Only Live Twice“, as well as the tracks for their new EP. Chris handles recording and production, and via a recent email correspondence he told us that he has accumulated a lot of interesting “curios” for the job, including, of all things, “a mixing desk that once belonged to Iron Maiden“! Explaining that the desk is what gives his recordings their “metal factor”, he also says that in lieu of formal training he relies upon instinct when recording and producing, and that means, “…’mistakes’ can happen. The upside is that those mistakes can yield something a bit different and a bit less clean. I’m very willing to let fate intervene when a clear path doesn’t present itself. When that doesn’t work we spend the day recording feedback.”
The new 10″ kicks off with the record’s title track “Leave You“, and it initially belies all mention of Iron Maiden or days of recorded feedback, as Muireann’s lovely, wide-eyed vocals cast a lilting spell among the drifting layers of chiming and strummed guitar, before the band bursts forth with a soaring wall of sound. Underpinned by heavy bass tones that provide a real visceral grit to the track, like on many of the EP’s six songs, Muireann’s dreamy vocals are then “grounded” in the best of ways, and this interplay between the physical and ethereal provides the track emotional depth. “I Found Love” continues the band’s thrilling use of low end, building the song around a strong, rolling bass-line and tense, tribal drumming; and as shards of guitar noise peel off, this cut finds Chris adding vocal duties in eerily chanted monotone. A “soft to loud” shift in this track is made all the more powerful by Ruairi’s growling, absolutely filthy bass-line, accompanied by Muireann’s celestial vocals, again extending the song’s sonic and emotional depths!
While Elastic Sleep’s alternating dynamics, hushed in moments and walls of sound in others, tightly animates the initial two tracks on the EP, “Deep and Blue” utilizes them in a more languid fashion, giving the song an almost pastoral feel. Haunted by a droning dithyramb of sound, a heartbeat bass-line, and simple strummed guitar, Muireann’s vocals here have a starry, lullaby quality to them. The droning and pastoral elements are reminiscent of the Sian Alice Group, but Elastic Sleep trades that band’s often measured restraint, even when they attempted to let loose, for wild forays of sonic exuberance, as the group ascends to some of it’s highest heights, before crashing back to earth in smoldering flames!
With it’s six-songs running just over twenty minutes, Leave You is an accomplished debut, and having not even really yet hit the one year mark in their so far brief existence, Elastic Sleep should just be getting started in writing their exciting new chapter in the extended volumes of dream pop and shoe gaze! In fact, Chris reports that the band is “working hard on new songs”, and while they haven’t been recorded, things are “looking good at the moment”! Elastic Sleep has a handful of live dates in Ireland for May/June, and while they say playing somewhere as “vast” as the US would be a “dream,” their current focus is in getting to the UK. We wish them all the best!
Elastic Sleep Live May/June 2014:
MAY
4th Triskel Arts Centre, Cork w/Fears
10th Pine Lodge, Myrtleville
14th Workmans Club, Dublin supporting the Octopus Project w/Ambience Affair
15th Cobblestone Joes, Limerick supporting the Octopus Project
16th DeBarras, Clonakilty
17th Bello Bar, Dublin w/Galants and Segrasso
JUNE
6th Roisin Dubh, Galway
