Artist: Underwater Sleeping Society
Label: Kool Thing Records
Release: 2008
Running time: 48:17
Rating: 4/5
Although this album is stamped 2008, it only landed on our desk now (better late than never), so it’s worth keeping in mind that it came out right when demand for indie rock was in full bloom. Two years on, we don’t feel that buzz nearly as intensely, and the number of releases like this has dropped too. So let’s rewind two years and head back into the bosom of indie rock.
Underwater Sleeping Society are a Finnish band formed in 1999 in the town of Riihimäellä. Even the band’s name is a revelation – an ID card for their musical character. The music is mostly dreamy in nature, built on mid-tempo rhythms. A great sleeping aid, and I mean that in a good way. Underwater Sleeping Society’s music soothes rather than bores.
The band builds a vivid, rich weave of sonic layers, with each building block of their sound giving it a personality. That’s especially true of the keyboards, which lean on many tricks from the golden seventies – retro vibes, in other words. Sounds close to a Mellotron, touches of classical piano, naturally ringing chords coaxed out of the guitar. The band much prefers a mid-tempo pace. The drums have a completely natural, live sound. The brushwork on the cymbals sometimes underlines that feeling of a totally authentic, naturally packaged sound even more. Into all of this settles a dreamy, gently “absent” vocal, just as you’d expect for “sleepy hits,” which these Finns most definitely are. The vocal comes across as slightly sobbing, easygoing, loose and supple. So the pathos is clearly a deliberate virtue and an essential fixture of the band’s outer look. A vocal like that doesn’t bother in the slightest. You just have to get used to it. The guys deftly dress that whiff of pathos in a satirical streak in the lyrics, and they shake things up with multi-voiced harmonies, too.
It helps that the band has an innate feel for strong, convincing lead melodies, carried by the main motifs. They aren’t afraid at all to add woodwind and brass arrangements to the songs (Antique – trumpet, in Saw You At My Funeral and Painting The Dead – flute). On the flip side, there are a few songs with real potential that you could spin multiple times a day on heavily rotated radio frequencies or even on MTV (Accidents, the chorus of Trapdoors). The band also tastefully rounds out the album’s sound with string arrangements.
The dreamy atmosphere is nicely stirred up by the melodic bass lines. The bass is always ready to weave in a melodically shaped, dynamic track, which adds the much-needed contrast to the band’s music, widens the soundscape and underlines its depth. Some bass lines recall the band flirting with the catalog of late-eighties acts that shaped the post-punk movement, like Joy Division, Cure or No Order. If we pour all that into the new era, the hypnotic effect dictated by the rhythm section offers (mood- and energy-wise) parallels with a band like Interpol (the song Trapdoors). And in the melody design, you can’t get past the legacy of The Beatles, which is the foundation of every true indie rock band anyway. The similarities to The National, Doves or Editors are just as hard to ignore.
On the album, Body Blues is the track that captures the whole point of Underwater Sleeping Society’s musical concept in a nutshell. All the band’s arranging qualities come together in one place, and the group’s entire creative energy culminates in this song in an optimal focal point of self-amplification. In a moment like that, it’s hard to say the song could have done anything better, or that it needs any kind of fix.
Given that all the songs differ enough in their lead motifs while still keeping the band’s musical through-line, “The Dead Vegas” is a creation that, within the predictable genre framework of indie rock, successfully loosens those boundaries and adds much-needed intellect and creative wit. That’s why I can say without mincing words that this is an outstanding musical achievement and one of the better records to come out in indie rock in 2008. Scandinavians simply have an innate sense for well-rounded melodic harmony, and they carry an anguish and sadness in their hearts that generates convincing music. They’re honest enough to dare to show that honesty. That’s why “The Dead Vegas” is a very convincing, high-quality musical product that I wholeheartedly recommend to everyone looking for true musical “independence.” It confirms that Underwater Sleeping Society have found their recognizable musical language, one that will surely keep impressing in the future.
Lineup
Okko Nieminen – vocals, guitar
Tomi Tiittanen – guitar
Jussi Hietala – bass guitar
Sampo Fagerlund – drums
Olli Waris – keyboards
Matti Olavi Töyli – percussion, horn
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Hanna Kaasalainen – violin
Emmi Kaasalainen – viola
Katariina Kumpulainen – cello
Tuomas Eriksson – trombone
Maija Hietala – flute
Samuli Peltoniemi – trumpet
Production
Underwater Sleeping Society, Jukka Putkinen & Henri “Hippo” Ohvo
Track list
1. Saw You At My Funeral
2. Hurry Or Worry
3. Trapdoors
4. Body Blues
5. Painting The Dead
6. Counting Stars
7. Antique
8. Accidents
9. Golem
10. This Might Have Happened…
11. The End Us Just A Dawn
