Asleep Is A Friend of Mine is the debut EP from Melbourne band Catch Release.
The band’s sound is described as “Alt Soul Folk Soundscape”. It may sound convoluted and overly verbose, but honestly that’s the only way to describe it.
The Melbourne five-piece layer together guitar, drums, violin, the French horn and vocals to create a sound that is rich and enveloping.
The band’s lead singer, New Zealander, Tom Lee Richards has an amazing voice, with the unique ability of swapping from a honey-jazz tone to a more rocky feel with minimal effort.
The lyrics and vocals become a little hypnotic in some of the tracks, particularly ‘Out Of Sight’. The repetition of the line“If you go where the Sun don’t go, the darkness you will find.”
‘Chasing Ideas’ clocks in at almost seven minutes, and the song seems to have about five different personalities that all blend together: it begins with beatboxing and slowly the band’s other elements are added to create a song that is bursting with auditory stimulation.
The closing song from the EP is ‘Sound Of The Ceiling’. The lyrics are sweet and perfectly capture that warm, fuzzy, very in love kind of feeling.
The soundscape aspect of the record is evident in the concise nature of the lyrics, the ideas are punchy and precise rather than needlessly embellished.
The focus is not just one voice or idea, but rather how all those things come together. The music is beautiful, caught somewhere between symphony and folk, as is Lee-Richards’ voice which moves capably right along with it.
The whole thing is masterful, in the way that the EP swells and then comes to a really satisfying end.
