Song of the Day: “Something” by Sleepspent


Today’s song is “Something” by Sleepspent. 21-year-old songwriter and guitarist, Austin North began performing as a UC San Diego student before eventually returning to his hometown of El Paso to form Sleepspent with friend and co-writer, Aaron Quintanilla. Today the band is now a trio including Cecilia Otero on bass and Josh Mendoza on drums.

North has been creating music that is described as “bathed in atmosphere.” They are “inspired by shoegaze and dreampop,” North says. “That can be heard in the alternate tunings used throughout our music as well as the melodic chord progressions and melodies.”

And though he’s young, North also takes influence from future hall-of-famers like The Cure and The Smiths – two more acts with definitive “sounds” that have never sacrificed art for artifice.

North’s formative years studying jazz guitar wraps it all up in a solid technical foundation, too, but ultimately, Sleepspent songs exist to make you feel.

“They’re more about whatever emotion and feeling they bring about in people,” North says. “I write them to make people feel and interpret my own musings rather than to have them be relatable.”

“A lot of the songs on the EP center around a feeling of confusion and a sense of isolation, and ‘Something’ is a prime example of that,” North continues, referring to the EP’s first single.

The song evolved from a North demo into a Sleepspent signature song that features a kind of indie version of the “wall of sound,” which was created by North alone and then re-created in the studio.

“‘Something’ came to be all in one night by myself,” North affirms. “I recorded the demo with some odd recording techniques, like blindly playing random notes in the same key over multiple tracks in order to get a very noisy and chaotic sound that we recreated later.”

The band is quickly making a name for themselves in El Paso with their live act. They have also already been nominated as a ‘Best Band in the City’ by The City Magazine in El Paso, who called the trio “completely captivating, live and through your speakers.” Aside from being a go-to act to play locally, they have begun to hit the road in support of their new release (see dates below).

This track is off the band’s latest release It’s Better If You Don’t Speak or Think. This is the band’s debut album produced by Chris Common (Minus The Bear, Chelsea Wolfe, Le Butcherettes) is due out May 4th 2018 via Slow Start Records.

Listen below and for more information check out their official website, Facebook, and Instagram pages.

Sleepspent – Live
04/07/2018: Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
04/14/2018: El Paso, TX @ Low Brow Palace (Slow Start Records Showcase, Acoustic) (TIX)
05/04/2018: El Paso, TX @ Low Brow Palace (Record Release Show)

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