Sleeping At Last live!

Sleeping At Last
The Union, Naperville
Friday, October 6, 2006

Sleeping At Last may just be Chicagoland’s best-kept secret, so it should be no surprise that they chose to kick off their first headlining nationwide tour in a small, virtually unknown venue. The little old white church building (now a concert venue dubbed “The Union”) in quaint downtown Naperville, with its moody lamps, couches, and stained-glass windows, proved the perfect atmosphere for the emotion-laden set of Sleeping At Last.

After touring with the likes of Zwan, Switchfoot, and Yellowcard, the trio of pop-rockers feel ready to venture out on their own headlining tour in support of their latest album, Keep No Score. After a few years logging thousands of miles, hours of hard work, and leaps of maturity, the O’Neal brothers (Ryan at guitar/piano/lead vocals and Chad on drums) and their friend Dan Perdue (bass) scored a huge break when the break-out hit TV drama “Grey’s Anatomy” chose to air “Quicksand” during this fall’s season premiere. So now that their name is out there (again), the timing is perfect to hit the road once again and get their music heard.

The band were mostly business as they spent a little more than an hour playing through most of their latest disc, along with a few tracks from their 2003 debut, Ghosts. O’Neal’s vocals were spot-on throughout, suggesting very little was done to clean them up in the studio. That proved to be vital for a show where he and his falsetto carried 100 percent of the vocal duties, without a single harmony or backing vocal alongside him. Instrumentally the guys were very solid, showing a surprisingly advanced use of loops and other sonic layers. The show seemed to be missing two key elements though, both things that should come with the maturity of playing more and bigger shows.

First, there was very little interaction with the crowd, even though they seemed to be almost begging for it. While the full house of mostly college students did remain fixated on the band throughout the night, without knowing much of the music seemed to limit their involvement. And O’Neal seemed much more focused on performing than really engaging them. Second, the band will hopefully learn to bring the crowd on a more musically diverse journey. While the show’s opener and the encore’s opener both rocked with some intensity, the rest of the songs remained at one long, melancholy level.

Sleeping At Last certainly own the ability to craft and record memorable heartfelt pop songs, and there’s nothing like a nationwide headlining tour to develop the abilities to perform them, and to win over throngs of fans. Hopefully by the end of this tour, they will have awakened the country to their sound — at last.

— Carter Moss

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly