Sleepy Jackson

A delirious kaleidoscopic pick ‘n’ mix

The man of Steele returns. Life as a pop visionary and trippy romanticist hasn’t been easy for Luke, frontman of Antipodean dreamers The Sleepy Jackson. He’s been written-off as some kind of megalomaniac, born-again Christian preacher man; a pastiche merchant with severe problems of keeping a band together for longer than 20 minutes. Certifiable dribbling loony-bin material, basically. His response is an album that promises to readdress the balance and close some gaping wounds, as well as delivering an experience akin to “1930s in the future”.
The delirious kaleidoscopic pick ‘n’ mix of The Sleepy Jackson’s last LP, 2003’s ‘Lovers’, had both gnarled hacks and indie kids numbed to fuck by ‘Room On Fire’ up in arms. A stylistic trolley-dash down the Yellow Brick Road, it loaded-up on bow-legged dustbowl country, wonky glam and crooked folk songs, shot-through with the kind of widescreen melodies Brian Wilson wrote before hiding in his tepee.