You Should Check Out “Sleepy Dog”
Math-rock is fairly large yet often unheard of genre. Those who know of it usually listen to it, and those who don’t… well, don’t. I personally have been a little on the fence about Math Rock for a while. I certainly enjoy songs from the genre legends like ‘American Football’ or ‘TTNG’, I really enjoy some of the instrumental bands in the genre like ‘Covet’. Yet, when I listen to the vast majority of the genre I can never listen to more than a couple songs at once.
Enter “Sleepy Dog”. Sleepy Dog, just a year ago when he released his first LP in 2018 was pretty small but since has been growing fairly quickly. He’s still relatively unheard of compared to his far larger peers and I suppose that’s the nature of being in a genre like Math Rock, you’re either un-heard of or a giant.
Math-rock and its often accompanied sub-genre, mid-west emo, contain beautiful luscious chords, glittery guitar fills and introspective lyrics that make it a very dreamy and somber experience. Bands like ‘Tiny Moving Parts’ sometimes try to jack a little more energy into it at times, but for the most part dreamy and somber is the usual M.O of the genre. Sometimes that’s a fantastic experience and other times it sounds like angsty white suburban drivel. That’s pretty much always been the dichotomy of my relationship with math rock until I discovered Sleepy Dog.
Sleepy Dog preserves the classic tenants of math rock: alternate turnings, angular melodies, glittery riffs and dreamy sounds. He is by no means reinventing the genre, but at the same time it would be completely wrong to say that he isn’t bringing something new to the genre. His riffs/playing style tends to be a little more messy, or perhaps loose is a better word, than your usual math rock band. I don’t mean this in its tone, tonally its not at all uncommon to come across fuzzy or distorted guitar tones, although Sleepy Dog does certainly lean into it a bit more, when I say it sounds more loose or messy I mean that quite literally. There is a much more free form feel to the way he plays guitar, it’s a sensation that’s tough to describe without hearing. Compare the guitar work of someone like Jimi Hendrix to like an Angus Young (of ACDC), both great guitarist but Jimi Hendrix undoubtedly has this looseness that Angus Young doesn’t. Sleepy Dog himself has said that he went through a couple a years where he was obsessed with and only listened to Jimi Hendrix and that could honestly explain his sound, in many ways his playing style sounds like is Jimi Hendrix was writing and playing pop-punk music.
On top of his loose playing his music also tends to have a little more energy in it than most math rock. Again, while certain bands like Tiny Moving Parts have injected more energy into their music it still tends to come across as emo drivel. Its often hard with music to pinpoint what difference in the music is causing what difference in response — the intervals used in the melodies? the instrumentation? the mixing? Ultimately I think the difference comes down to how laid back Sleepy Dog sounds musically and vocally. This again sort of plays into the looseness of his guitar playing that I was talking about but it extends beyond just instrumentation to lyrical content and vocal delivery as well. He feels so laid back and relaxed in a way that most other mid-west emo bands don’t. This is only furthered by the mixing which, contrary to what most math rock records do, allows all the different instruments to be mixed at similar levels and sort of meld and mesh together. The result is a sort of wall of sound effect that gives the music a very different feel from the vast majority of math rock.
Overall he is a fantastic and relatively young artist who still has plenty of room to grow. He sounds mathy enough to appeal to the math rock masses, but different enough to also appeal to your regular indie/alternative rock listener. If you’re looking to give him a listen I would start with ‘Space Cadet’ from his first full length LP (its honestly still his best song in my opinion) and after that I would check out the rest of his first album, and then his third album. His second album is really only worth checking out if you loved the other two and need more, but it is definitely the weakest of his three major projects.