Sleepwalker, Long Beard’s debut album, is aptly named, for listening to each song feels like maneuvering through the hazy edges of your most melancholic dreams – both here and there, warm, and cool, so close and yet so distant. Perpetually teetering between sleep and awake, the album opens up with an instrumental track that sounds like it’s being played backwards, slowly leading into “Porches,” a song of desire and longing where Leslie Bear pleads “who do you love?/ Who do you love?/ And is it enough?” The album climaxes at "Dream" – before the vocals start disintegrating, becoming almost indiscernible, with the looping electronic textures folding into themselves – as if the silhouette of those gentle songs disappeared into a shadow and then became nothing more than a film blanketing the early hours of dusk.
“Please don’t forget/ You’re something I listen to/ When I’m not sleeping.”
Don’t miss Long Beard performing at Baby’s All Right with Emily Yacina, Yohuna, and Crosslegged on 2.29. – Adriana S Ballester