The Band in Heaven
We’ve already featured no less than 15 bands who will be playing at the upcoming 2012 Hopscotch Music Festival, and we’ll continue to highlight one band each day until the festival is underway. Today’s song is from a band who I hadn’t heard of until about two weeks ago, but they’re high on my list of bands I’m going to make sure that I see.
The Band in Heaven is a noise-pop/shoegaze band from West Palm Beach, Florida. On paper, they’re the duo of Ates Isildak and Lauren Dwyer. In practice, though, they’re a quintet. Their sound has a bit of a UK goth rock edge to it, and a bit of psychedelica. Today’s song reminds me of the relentless buzzsaw of a song like “Motorcycle” by Love and Rockets.
The band have been generating quite a bit of buzz, and they’ve only released a 7″ record. They’re often mentioned in the same sentence with The Jesus & Mary Chain and A Place to Bury Strangers. While they’re not quite as brilliantly destructive as APTBS, I totally get it.
Here’s today’s song:
“Sleazy Dreams” by The Band in Heaven
There’s no prevaricating about the bush here. They get straight into it from the drop. One thing that I really like about this song is that there’s a little break towards the end of the song. Between 1:50 and 2:20 it calms down significantly. Then at 2:20, it kicks back in with a vengeance. You think the song is winding down, but it knocks you over with one more blunt hit with a sledgehammer. It’s brilliant.
They also do this song in a sludgy, psychedelic way that makes it almost sound like a different song. They call it, appropriately, “Sludgy Dreams”.
For extra credit, I highly recommend their spellbinding cover of “Dreams” by The Cranberries, which is available as a free download:
The “Sleazy Dreams” 7″ is available for download from the band’s bandcamp page here. You can get it in physical form from the HoZac Records site.
Please note that if you use the amazon mp3 store or eMusic to download this EP, you’ll get versions of “Sleazy Dreams” and “Sludgy Dreams” that are abbreviated. What’s missing from the “Sleazy Dreams” is the bit where you think the song is fading out. I don’t know why it’s like that, but it is. Get the bandcamp version.
The Band in Heaven will be playing on Saturday night of Hopscotch. They’ve got the 10pm-11 slot at Tir na nOg. You can bet that I’ll be there for a good part of it.
this is that song 
August 27th, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Oh! Well, this is certainly a most pleasant discovery!