IE: What inspired this “Yearbook” project?
Ryan O’Neal: We were tired of the wait between records and it gives us more of an opportunity to make music. I heard an interview with [producer/film composer] Hans Zimmer who was talking about how being in a band means you talk about music all the time, but you rarely make it. You just make a small, tiny collection and promote it on tour, whereas over the course of the next year, we can create 36 songs, which will double our past catalog that took almost a decade to write.

IE: Do you ever worry you won’t be able to complete it or have you decided failure isn’t an option?
Dan Perdue: That’s mentally the state you have to be in, but it’s going to be a tightrope for a lot of it. We’re just trying to work through it and see what we can get done, trying not to think about not doing it and just not letting failure be an option.

IE: What stylistically will run throughout the new songs?
RO: Even with a lot of hipper bands popping up, one thing Dan and I talk about is our love for melody and song structure. Sometimes experimentation may sound like a cool idea, but not if it isn’t enjoyable to listen to? So we always keep a pop aspect in our songwriting. When we’re making an album, certain songs and styles might come up that don’t fit the common thread, but across the course of 36 songs, you can stretch out and base the style of each song on the inspiration that’s coming at the time.

IE: Will any specials guests pop up?
RO: We thought it would be really fun to have lots of different people participating and, for our first EP, we have Stacy DuPree from Eisley singing. We’ve also asked some of our regular lineup of buddies to play some stuff, plus Brooke Waggoner and Matthew Perryman Jones, with more to come as we get deeper into the project.

IE: How do you think this will expand your audience?
DP: It’s a lot easier to take a chance on three songs from a new band for $3 rather than a whole album if you don’t already know them. If people get excited about the project, they’ll talk about it and tell people who haven’t heard us before.

IE: Are there package deals for fans?
RO: We’re offering a $30 subscription where people save some money by buying it up front. You get an e-mail the first of every month saying the EP is available and you don’t have to remember to go back and buy it. And then we’re going to do a box at the end.

Sleepling At Last’s “Yearbook” project releases monthly EPs in place of the traditional album schedule. Q&A by Andy Argyrakis, photo by Allister Ann.

Sleeping At Last will be one of Chicago’s great what-ifs. Handpicked to open one of the first few Zwan gigs and given time to craft a sweeping, Radiohead-style debut, their success only seemed a matter of when.

But for reasons unknown, the band withdrew and existed myth-like on fan message boards, not unlike the way Sunny Day Real Estate did after their initial breakup. They took three years to follow-up their Interscope debut, Ghosts, with the independently released Keep No Score. Our Carter Moss caught them on that 2006 tour’s opener in a former Naperville church, and found the show hopeful, and riding a boost from a song rented by “Grey’s Anatomy.” Then they withdrew again.

Storyboards arrived with no advance warning and little fanfare at IE, fitting its understated, lullaby style. Only one track, “Timelapse,” threatens to break a sweat. Mostly, “Storyboards” is built around Ryan O’Neal’s soaring, forlorn pipes, reacting to his emotional state with crying strings (at one juncture arranged by the great Van Dyke Parks) or a cymbal splash. “Clockwork” unveils a Judy Garland-style ballad, while opener “Porcelain” runs astride the organic evolution of Sigur Rós. The Sunny Day Real Estate comparison above is no accident; the lyrics are locked in battle with faith and searching for it in the elements (“Slow & Steady”), deception (“Naive”), and over time (“All This To Say”).

It’s an ambitious, wide-lens album with as many questions as answers. If only they’d get out more.

– Steve Forstneger