A well-known singer/songwriter who goes by the name Elvis Costello once had an album called All This Useless Beauty. Now, I don't know the first thing about Costello other than a few random titles of albums and songs in his repertoire, so I can't tell you whether that title is an apt description for that album, or any of his music. But there are times when I think that title might apply to the music being made by Wheaton, Illinois band Sleeping at Last on their second, independently-produced album.

Alright, so "useless" might not be the best description. The point of beauty does not lie in its utility, and far be it from me to suggest that beautiful music needs to justify itself with any purpose other than simply being what it is. I enjoyed Sleeping at Last a great deal on their debut Ghosts, which was a captivating and at times even transcendent piece of work. The band's style - dreamy, clean-sounding, and often mid-to-slow-tempo pop/rock, with generous helpings of piano, bells, and strings - proved to be a classy complement to their lyrical poetry, without coming across as overly cute or annoyingly perky. That style hasn't changed much on their follow-up, Keep No Score, but that might be where a few of the problems start to arise. When your band gets to a point where ethereally beautiful songs about existential human struggles and the unseen moments where Heaven and Earth seem to bleed together are the expected norm, you could be writing a truly gorgeous and captivating piece of work, and it'll become hard to notice because what surrounds it sounds just like it and carries the same amount of potential impact. It's that age-old dilemma of having so many crescendoes that you simply wear the listener out. Coldplay knows it well, and sometimes does this through much less intricate songs, and they got insanely popular, so it's beyond me why Sleeping at Last had to release this album without the help of a record label. Ghosts was an excellent record that more people deserved the chance to hear, and Keep No Score is a very good follow-up, but it can feel awfully darn close to an overdose on several occasions, and that keeps it from being a true A-grade recording.

Does the problem lie in the song tempos? Those seem to be the most obvious culprits at first. Ghosts ran the risk of having its songs bleed together at times, but it had "Say" and "All that Is Beautiful" to get things moving a little faster; Keep No Score appears to have a definite speed limit, a sense of restraint haunting even its most joyous songs. I like a lot of slow-burning albums (including Coldplay's - I poke fun at their sentimentality but they are a good band), but a lot of them generally do a better job of distinguishing their songs - there are at least three in this record's back half that I get mixed up on multiple occasions. Could the problem be the vocals? Sadly, yes. Ryan O'Neal has an enigmatically soft-but-loud voice - it sounds so fragile and vulnerable and boyish, and yet he's right up front most of the time, getting a bit too local on occasions where he sounds like he's having trouble making a smooth transition from one note to the next during a well-written lyrical passage that is supposed to have a profound impact. Make no mistake, the lyrics that this band writes are almost uniformly excellent. It's just that something gets lost in translation between the scribbled poetry and the final version sung on record. No matter how lovely, a lot of the melodies don't quite have the punch to make them stick in the brain easily, and this causes a thick jumble of genuinely good words to bubble under the surface, only catching the attention of the most devoted listener (i.e. someone like me). I'm not an impatient music fan - I love digging for good nuggets of truth - but it can frustrate me when powerful words aren't delivered with the focus that they deserve. It's as if this band could benefit from doing something a little more stark or harsh-sounding - I don't want their core sound to change because I do love it, but a little more variation and experimentation could help their words to truly leap off of the page, rendering their more typical "pretty" songs more worthy of attention.

I mean, think about it. If you walked into a room with 12 adorably cute kids, and left a few minutes later, how many of their faces would you remember? Now, what if there were 6 adorably cute kids, 3 sexy-looking (but not slutty!) adult women, and 3 rugged-but-handsome adult men? Would you be likely to remember more of those 12 faces? I'm guessing you probably would.

But don't let me get too hung up on my small complaints. Sleeping at Last is still a band that seems at times to have a direct line to the supernatural world. Their music is very "we"-focused on most of their songs, largely eschewing personal and insular storytelling, and tapping into more universal longings without resorting to generic greeting-card language. Themes that recur on this album seem to center around the beauty that God has infused the universe with, our failed attempts as humans to capture it, the conflicts we have that cause us to miss that beauty altogether, and the fact that we ultimately don't deserve it, but it's there for us anyway. Strings play a major role in their music, and thankfully they're thoughtfully arranged instead of being sappy, cliche canned strings (though I wonder if the reliance on them could prove cumbersome if and when the band tours for this album), as do pianos. Often they contribute to a wall of sound that builds slowly as a song progresses, meaning that very few of the songs have an instant hook, but a lot of them have memorable crescendoes, assuming you're still paying attention a few minutes into a track when all of the lead-in finally pays off. Those who prefer their rock to be more of a primal, balls-to-the-wall sort of thing will likely find this to be wussy as all get-out (I can picture some wise-guy Rolling Stone writer calling it "emo without the grit" - maybe it's a good thing they're not on a major label!), but not all rock music is meant to be about testosterone. For me, it's powerful stuff, and they just need to figure out when to go full-blast with that emotional power and when to try more of a roundabout approach. I can't complain too much; for the most part I'm just happy to finally have a new record from these guys in my eager hands.

Tension & Thrill
We are diamonds waiting to be found
Catching light in the corners of our eyes...
Just to clue you in that the strings are an important piece of this album, they're actually the first thing you hear, right before a subtle electric guitar lick comes swooping in, giving the lead track a feel much like "Say" from the last album. The song never quite takes off like "Say" does, tempo-wise, but it has its own light-footed personality that ultimately works in its favor. "Love is tension and thrill that begs to be ours", says the chorus in an effective outpouring of emotion (the first of many on this album) - it's a lyric that I've had on a T-shirt for 2 years (which also had other typed lyrics from Ghosts) that I didn't recognize until now, though I think its impact is greater when read than when heard on the record. There are lots of interesting metaphors dealing with diamonds and icebergs and sharks here, which goes to show that even on their (relatively) more upbeat and poppy songs, the band tries to give us something poetic to grapple with. The glimmering guitars and the strings mesh so well, flowing neatly into any gaps left by the lyrical structure, that I really can't complain.

Careful Hands
We are X-rays of something broken
Cursive bloodlines write every forecast
An orchestration of dissonance and innocent surrender...
As this carefully-paced track gets going with its straightforward, evenly spaced piano chords, you might be tempted to think that it's too soon for a Coldplay-ish ballad. And you might be right, but tempo-wise, it's better to leave what few upbeat songs are left for later. Thankfully the band has more on its mind than, say, Coldplay's treacle "What If", hitting us early with the line, "Keep your chin up as you untangle God from cold bloody bruises". This is a song about evil being manipulated back around for good, or rather, humans trapped in between both learning to see good pop out of the most surprising places. I love how the group mixes terms that are generally seen ugly, such as fans and broken bones and dissonance, with terms that describe beauty, insinuating that the beauty has to be delicately drawn out of the ugly situation rather than just hoping the ugliness will vanish of its own accord. The strings are a welcome presence again here (they're never anything but that on this record), ending up being the icing on the cake to top off an already pretty song.

Needle & Thread
When the world welcomes us in
We're closer to Heaven than we'll ever know...
OK, so it's really too soon for this. I won't kid you, this is an exceptional piece of songwriting, with the delicate acoustic guitars sketching out just enough of a hint of rhythm at the beginning to anchor things down as Ryan's hushed lyrics are almost impossible to make out, and these elements eventually building and blending in with more achingly beautiful strings to make this the new album's version of "Hurry". It doesn't feel right to get this intimate at track three, but OK, I'll go with it. Once again, if you're paying attention to the lyrics, it's easy to be drawn in by the universality of Ryan's keen observation that we are perhaps more innocent when born than we will ever be again during our time on Earth. Birth and death become the framework for a summary of what humans are made of, and I've rarely heard the concept that humans were created by a loving God, but are flawed due to sin as well, affirmed so skillfully as in this song's chorus: "We are made of love, and every fracture caused by the lack of it." This is one point on the album where I don't mind the constant emotional wavering of Ryan's voice - it fits the vulnerable instrumentation and it makes the song a definite early standout.

Envelopes
In broken English, arguments igniting fires
We'll sing in off-key choirs of an ageless rebirth....
The last album shared with us the metaphor of "Ghosts" as communicators between us and God, and now we have a song that appears to describe envelopes falling from the sky, as containers for some sort of message from God. It's all very esoteric, and this is one of the more difficult songs on the record to understand. Thankfully, it's also one of the most musically different tracks on the record, starting out with the strong bumping and tapping of drums to create a solid, mid-tempo 6/8 rhythm, and the surprisingly rough electric guitar chords that give the song a much needed sense of urgency (it still isn't a rocker, but it works). This is one of the fullest-sounding tracks on the album, and I love the way the strings work their way into the mix as the melody winds about - it's got one of those refrains that you expect to just be the build to the chorus, but then it smoothly backs off into the verse again, even allowing room for a surprisingly delicate bridge. Some may find this mix to be a bit murky, but I think it's a heavenly combination of sounds. The images of floating envelopes and birds in the album sleeve make me think that this song was intended to be one of the album's lynchpins, so while the level of noise may at times make it difficult to catch everything, it's worth listening closely.

Hold Still
Let conversations carry the unraveling of skin
The ink will pour an answer in children's handwriting...
Sleeping at Last's chief problem on this album is that having so many songs in either 3/4 or 6/8 can cause them to run together in the listener's mind. This becomes more of an issue in the back half, but it can retroactively affect one's impression of this song, and so can the positioning of this one right after "Envelopes". Don't let that deter you, because the first minute or so of this one may as well be the soundtrack to entering heaven. The soft, glowing keyboards, the faint echo of a pitch-shifted human voice, and most importantly, drummer Chad O'Neal, with his pounding of the toms and delicate, echoing cymbals, all conspire to create the best Sigur Ros song that Sigur Ros didn't actually come up with. (Bonus: It's in English!) It almost seems unfair to bring things back down to the level of earthly beauty when the song transitions to its first verse and we're left with a simple Rhodes and Ryan's voice asking, "Why is it impossible now to trace every echo back to its birth?" But that's the genius of it - this song is about a beauty so captivating that when you reach out to capture or describe it, it's gone. It's a moment where music and lyrics conspire to reflect the mood of having woken up from a euphoric dream and having that slight tinge of desperate sadness because you can't remember what the dream was about. "If all words are cameras", Ryan begs, "hold still. Shutters slide to unveil fingerprints of angels, and a language made of film." Rarely have truer lyrics been sung.

Heaven Breaks
When Heaven meets the earth
We will have no use for numbers
To measure who we are and what we're worth...
More delicately picked acoustics characterize this song, though they're not as quiet as "Needle & Thread", and the gaps are a little more filled in during this song, which looks forward to the moment when the boundaries between heaven and earth become blurred, an event which will apparently cause humans to cease all of their selfish jockeying for power, or something like that. It's a song that uses its verses to build tension, finally breaking into its "chorus" (which never actually repeats, instead modifying each time as Ryan describes what happens "when heaven meets the earth") and staying there until the song builds to its climax with the piano becoming a bit more theatrical and the drums crashing about. For some reason, I'm reminded of the fast section of Radiohead's "We Suck Young Blood", except that there's nothing even slightly dark or disturbing about the sound of this song. It's just the way the piano and drums take over, mostly.

Levels of Light
Death is the only thing that makes us alive
Forcing focus on light that we hold inside...
The Rhodes and a soft, circular guitar line give this song a warm opening as the album transitions into its more ambiguous back half after a fairly solid front half. I can't find anything individually wrong with this track - I love the way that the electric guitars come cascading down after the opening verse, the way Ryan softly croons "Wake up, wake up", and the way he compares people to volatile volcanoes that cause pain and death but ultimately make new land (I'll admit that driving around Hawaii's Big Island while listening to it helped). It's just that it's the first point on the album where I feel like the band is following one of their "song templates" - it feels a lot like "Brightly" from the last disc, which was followed by "Slowly, Now", which was hard to distinguish from it, just as the track after this one is harder for me to distinguish. The idea of death being a gateway to new life is an important and poignant metaphor that gets stated wonderfully in these lyrics, but at this point I'm starting to think that Ryan needs a way, with his vocals, to emphasize some of his more quotable lyrical snippets at times, just to give a song more variance and make sure we don't miss the crux of what he's trying to say.

Quicksand
On paper my future will lay
I'll fold every failure into a crane...
This track keeps nearly the same rhythm as "Levels of Light", maybe slowing it down a tad, and turning to natural piano rather than any sort of electric keyboard. This more delicate approach is appropriate for a song that seems to be about one person hurting another (nice follow-on to the previous song's theme) and needing forgiveness. "Trust is quicksand, claiming everything I have", Ryan explains, indicating how much our well-being seems to depend on others loving us well as we grow more and more attached to them over time. The song feels like it meanders a bit, not really gaining significant strength until near the end, where we find out that in between the conflict and resolution, "there is a kiss" (each time, the start and end of the conflict is summed up in different metaphors, which is a nice touch, but a little bit too late to make the song really stand out).

Umbrellas
We'll bring a child, we'll bring a child into this word
And we'll say the one thing everyone should hear
You were meant for amazing things...
Wow! Who would have thought that this album's most upbeat song would also turn out to be its most emotionally fulfilling moment? Perhaps this one stands out more to me because of the change of subject matter, the obvious romantic overtones, and the overall pace of it, but dang, this might just be the best song that the band has written. (Tough call, I'm still pretty attached to "Trees".) It starts out with bell-like keyboards - bright but not too sappy - and then the drums come thumping in, almost afraid to be overly bouncy but still getting the song off to a good brisk stroll - and we get the actual strum of an acoustic guitar for a change, instead of just picking. (I like picking, but here, we need a confident rhythm.) Ryan is in full sweetheart mode, briefly touching on different stages of a relationship as he tries his darndest to woo a girl by speaking of promises and rings and babies and picket fences - it might sound pretty routine, but the way he declares that he'll hand this world to her on a silver platter if she wants it is pretty much everything I've ever wanted to promise my wife. The song has a one-line chorus which it only really reaches twice, but those words hit with a lot of force, explaining what he wants this wife and child to know more than anything else: "You were meant for amazing things". Both times that this line appears, it's followed by a playful flourish of strings, and the second instance of this, which ends the song, is pure euphoria. The strings flow through their notes very quickly and is has a strong classical feel - none of this easy, schmaltzy movie soundtrack stuff. Usually, upbeat strings serve to add an element of humor or whimsy, so it's unusual to hear them played in this way during a song like this and have it work so wonderfully.

Sing to Me
When the weather settles down
We will search through this mess
Where I believe that we will find, through things left behind
The place where we began...
Another 6/8 song - this one has more prominent drums and there's some keyboard or pre-recorded instrument that sounds like a flute of some sort - I'm not sure what it is. This is probably the track that stands out to me the least - again, its rhythm and tempo make it hard to distinguish from earlier songs. It's about wanting to be transparent with someone, to have them sing "a prayer of hope and strength" and to sing back to them "as if my chest is made of glass". The song doesn't seem to want to go forth with full confidence like "Envelopes" and it doesn't pursue the delicate beauty of "Hold Still", and I've never been much for songs that sit in between, so I consider this one to be pleasant, but forgettable.

Dreamlife
Put down your weapon, child, and close your eyes
Because you and your enemies are innocent tonight...
I call this one the "ghost song". I mean, they already had a whole album entitled Ghosts, but this song has a strange operatic female vocal in the background (cleverly foreshadowed by the keyboards earlier in the song) which sounds like it's something straight out of some old haunted house movie, but way prettier. The song lives up to its title, unfolding very slowly, but successfully conjuring up a lucid dream of a world at peace, and almost haunting us with the reminder that this is intended to be real. The skeletal click-clacking of the drums earlier in the song and the moodiness of the piano make this one the album's most melancholy track. But it's also a convicting one, reminding those who claim to believe in God but hate each other that "The war that you're fighting has already been won". I don't know if this is intended to relate in any way to current political affairs, but if it is, it's nice to hear a band challenging our reasons for fighting without taking the obvious "all war is bad, down with the government" tack of most of the artistic celebrity camp, or the "Bush is God incarnate and therefore we must play patriotic hymns to every move he makes" mentality of a lot of their fellow Christian artists. All of that may well have nothing to do with anything, so I might be an idiot for bringing it up. The point is, it's a thrilling climax which is perfectly positioned near the end of the album.

Keep No Score
Is this a graveyard to bury her heart?
Or is it a garden where new life will start?
In a very un-Sleeping at Last-like move, they close their second record with a very lonesome, sparse title track. It's basically just a delicate acoustic guitar strum and some brief crooning from Ryan - it's two and a half minutes long and it almost feels like it's over before it starts. That makes it easy to miss the album's final lyrics, which are posed as a prayer to God for some unnamed woman, that she might listen and grasp the concept of grace, and not hate the Almighty, nor fear that He hates her. "Life is a mess we wake up to, a simple thread of a deeper truth", is the final line of the album, delivered quietly enough that you might think it's the low point in the song before it reaches its final outpouring, but after that, there's just dead air. It's a shame how easily this one just slips right by - a little bit of expounding on the idea, and it could have been one of their best, but it's still an interesting coda to "Dreamlife".

Man, reviewing this album turned out to be tough because of the effort it took to not describe most of the tracks using the same words over and over. Sleeping at Last can provide a sublime listening experience, and it's so difficult to translate that in words to a potential listener. To sum up, I'd say that if you have Ghosts and enjoy it, there should be no question about whether you'll like this one - it'll be worth your while, unless you only marginally liked Ghosts and can't handle the tradeoff of even more heavenly soundscapes in exchange for the glaring lack of upbeat-ness. For those new to SAL, you should definitely start with Ghosts, then go look the group up at MySpace or PureVolume, and if you like what's there, go to the trouble of tracking down Keep No Score (you can only get it at shows or online, so that kind of makes it a riskier buy for the uninitiated). Whatever the case, just be fair to these guys and give it two or three close listens before deciding whether Sleeping at Last lives up to its name. (It can actually be great music to fall asleep to, and it probably isn't recommended for times when you're supposed to be awake but having difficulty doing so, but for the most part, it's not boring, and sheesh, this band really needs a different name, don't they?)

ALBUM WORTH:
Tension & Thrill $1.50
Careful Hands $1
Needle & Thread $1.50
Envelopes $2
Hold Still $2
Heaven Breaks $1
Levels of Light $1
Quicksand $.50
Umbrellas $2
Sing to Me $.50
Dreamlife $2
Keep No Score $.50
TOTAL: $15.50

Band Members:
Ryan O'Neal: Lead vocals, guitars, keyboards
Chad O'Neal: Drums, percussion, programming
Dan Perdue: Bass, guitars, keyboards, backing vocals

Website: http://www.sleepingatlast.com

Recommended: Yes