SUPERMAN'S BLUES

This is the second album of Sleepin Pillow, which is my introduction to them.

I'd call this music psychedelic rock with a lot of qualities used from the ideas of modern progressive rock. The music is some bizarre child of Oceansize, Porcupine Tree and some stoner rock and psychedelia.

Energy on the most of the songs are great. Dominant bass guitar and atmospheric effects carry most of the songs on the first half.

The production and the way the layers and effects are used reminds me of Steven Wilson. Eastern rhythm instruments, electronic beats, a lot of production tricks differ them from a regular rock band to the likes of Porcupine Tree and other modern progressive rock bands.

This is a rock album that the main attention doesn't go to the guitars and the guitar playing. They are mostly simple rock guitars. But that doesn't mean that they're not used effectively. Sometimes they set the atmosphere by distortion effects and sometimes near-to-explode feeling with clean guitar playing. But the atmospheres are mostly set with the great keyboard use.

Another thing that reminds me Porcupine Tree on this album is the vocals. The vocalist sings his lines with muddy voice on some songs like "Pathetic". Since the music sometimes turns into atmospheric rock and metal , the vocal has to change the style radically. The vocal is not very capable to sing strongly on heavy moments of the album as well as on mellower moments. Wish there was more epic singing on these powerful moments. The overall vocals are mostly soft and melancholic. We even hear some whispering here and there.

As the albums flows to the second half, the music gets a little bit progger with wierd songs like "A Big Circle". This song is based on some brass and string instruments, it's pretty symphonic. But there's always a robotic voice talking with some numbers, and some signals that probably talk in morse is always there. The song ends, the morse signals continue a little bit into another song, which is mostly instrumental with a lot of electronic effects. The song is called "Masterpiece". The ending is very strong with the vocals, distortion guitars, keyboards and rock drumming involved. The next song "Simple Words of Truth" has also a great atmosphere. The melodies and music is more meloncholic. I enjoyed it very much.

The thing missing for this to be a true prog rock album is the general composition technics, which does not vary and get out of verse-chorus-verse much. Though I like some of the proggy bridges a lot, like on the half of the song "Dope".There are some songs that work as bridges, the album overall is pretty proggy, but I still have a feeling that this band tries to be commercial and prog together. Though that doesn't mean they make great albums. I have this soft spot for prog or avant-garde music as they sound like "more art" to me, but even for me, there's no need to dream this album to be progger, so I'll just enjoy what I have. And what I have is strong music with much emotion, mostly sadness and anger, presented very well. The flow of the songs and the material is strong enough to enjoy this musical journey throughout. So if you want to listen to an album of great atmospheres and production with nice melodies, I recommend this one.