Sleeper Agent – About Last Night
RCA
-out now
4 / 5
Sleeper Agent (with The ‘Mericans)
Aug 1, 7pm
Waterplace Park, Providence, RI
(Free – all ages)
There are few things we appreciate more than a burning beat that soothes our hungry dance-heart. And Sleeper Agent’s (hailing from Bowler Green, KY) pop-centricity pulls us right in, gets us singing through their sophomore. It’s not bass-heavy electronica (think *ahem* Chain Gang of 1974) or pure saccharine pop (a la Sondre Lerche), or lightning-storm-cloud electro-buzz (St. Vincent, we look at you) but it strikes a pleasant, palatable medium: easy to get into, easy to get through, and somehow, pure blissful joy. We tend to love those angular, weird little tracks, but this one – ladies and gents – strikes us as a type of sheer joy innocent of all those weird little idiosyncrasies we tend to extoll. And, quite frankly, Sleeper Agent don’t need it.
We dug through this album and came up with a handful of tracks – “Waves” (the music-videoed single), “Good Job,” “Shut,” “Haunting Me,” that we adore. It’s sit-in-the-sun, tan yourself kinda fun, perfect for haunting about ice cream stands and beaches this time of year: addictive, simple, and quite good. It’s actually tough not to find a good song on About Last Night, those tracks are few and interspersed, and for such a straightforward album, we’re impressed at how much the tracks grow on us, how much we find ourselves again and again singing along, dancing along, swaying to these beats. We’re not going to say they’re anything as complex and deep as Typhoon, but Sleeper Agent make their own merits.
Add to that their free concert in Providence, and we’re pretty convinced you’ll be hooked. Seriously. It pains us to say we’ll be out of commission that Friday, but we suspect downtown will be painfully packed, but that it’ll still be worth it. Great all around, and highly recommended.
Soundcloud it, post-haste!