Sleeping In The Aviary and Cheap Hotels

I believe when you name your record Expensive Vomit In A Cheap Hotel you're kind of setting yourself up for a certain degree of scrutiny. Whether or not that scrutiny is deserved should really be left up to whether or not the music is any good and in the case of Sleeping In The Aviary it's kind of a tossup. This indie freak folk band is a kind of twisted, shambolic, noisy wreck of a group that somehow manages to keep itself together through each of the eleven songs here despite sounding as if they're being ripped apart at the seams.

Sleeping In The Aviary is a mess and they sound like it. Songs seem to have no production value, no direction and aren't all that great and yet when they manage to focus they can write a pretty decent song here. When they do, it's a bit of classic indie rock in a Modest Mouse/Archers of Loaf kind of thing. It's rough, raw, and under produced stuff. It's not great but Expensive Vomit In A Cheap Hotel has it's moments and those moments are worth listening to. With strummy guitars, lo-fi vocals, barely audible percussion and a sense that the whole thing was recorded on 1/4 inch tape, Expensive Vomit In A Cheap Hotel has a level of honesty and purity about it, that despite it's recklessness is appealing.

If ever there was a band keeping it real, Sleeping In The Aviary would be it. They play things as if they've just bought their instruments, they sound like a bunch of hung-over geeks, and when it comes down to it they're not even that great but Expensive Vomit In A Cheap Hotel, like it's name implies, is a study in contrasts. If you like messy indie rock or folk music with a kick, you'll more than likely enjoy Sleeping In The Aviary's crazy tunes.