The Kissaway Trail Sleep Mountain (Bella Union)
2/5
By: Matt Tomiak
That title alone immediately suggests The Kissaway Trail are in the business of fashioning colossal epiphanies ripe for the enormodrome, and so, with its sights set squarely and singularly on ‘epic’, does Sleep Mountain prove.
The Danish quintet’s second album might only run to just a shade under an hour, but it feels a whole lot longer. The tone is clear from hubristic six minute opener ‘SDP’ – an unlikely fusion of Los Campesinos! and Arcade Fire – and understated the rest of this album most certainly isn’t: this lot make Joshua Tree-era U2 sound like Sebadoh.
Co-vocalists Soren Corneliussen and Thomas Fagerlund both employ a cracked tenor a la Dough Martsch or Jonathan Donahue, but any residual vulnerability within their voices becomes submerged beneath the copious dollops of production sheen. ‘Beat Your Heartbeat’ contains a seemingly interminable titular refrain resulting in its sentiments appearing less profound than even Chris Martin’s painfully earnest yet oft-lampooned promise to Try And Fix You, and a cover of Neil Young’s ‘Philadelphia’ bludgeons the frail, sepia-tinged nostalgia of the original via obtrusive kettle drums and an unnecessarily glossy varnish.
‘New Lipstick’ proves the Kissaway Trail have got tunes bubbling somewhere underneath, but attempting to endure Sleep Mountain in a single sitting feels like gorging on a particularly sickly post-rock gateaux.
Artists in this article: The Kissaway Trail
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