Since his 2005 hit album ‘Awake is the New Sleep’ Ben Lee hasn’t quite been able to repeat such a success. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; Lee has a steady, and completely devoted fan base. The kind that rallies for The Bens to get back together and considers obscure soundtrack songs like ‘Naked’ to be their favorite tracks. So it stands to reason that Lee has had one or two hits from each album since ‘Awake is the New Sleep.’
His latest album, Lee admits, is a departure from anything he’s done before. The title, ‘Deeper Into Dream’ gives it all away. The record is inspired by and deals with dreams in a very literal way. So literal in fact, that a quarter of the tracks on the album are people describing their own dreams.
And while the album does deviate from what we’d anticipate of Lee, it’s not as much of a deviation as Lee would like to have us think. Two tracks on the album, ‘Indian Myna’ and ‘Glue’ are very similar to the kind of upbeat and endearing sound most people associate with Lee, complete with a very twee xylophone in the background.
Lee ventures into the world of electro with ‘When the Light Goes Out’ and ‘I Want My Mind Back,’ but it’s not an upbeat electro like you might think, it’s much more pensive and dark, like the rest of the album.
‘Pointless Beauty’ has a beautiful Californian sound to the intro but is ruined by the painful sound of Lee harmonizing with himself. ‘The Church of Someone Else’ proves easier to listen to but sounds like it belongs on Lee’s sophomore album 1997’s Something to Remember Me By with a vocal style exclusive to sad mid-90s pop music. Is it a step backwards or perhaps an ode to the past?
The stand out track on the album by far is ‘Get Used to It’. It’s progressive, and musically on-trend but stays true to the sound that Lee’s fans have come to expect from him. If only Lee was producing more music like this.
Chuck Klosterman once said that “people who talk about their dreams are actually trying to tell you things about themselves they’d never admit in normal conversation.” Maybe Lee should suck it up and talk about his dreams out loud instead of making an entire record about them, his resources and his fans would be better for it.
– Esther Semo
