Pitchfork

Somebody's been getting their beauty rest. The first time I saw the Big Sleep, at 2006's CMJ, the Brooklyn trio's sludgy, mostly instrumental post-rock almost made up for getting my back jumped on by camera-wielding Thunderbirds Are Now! fans, but when I caught the same band opening an outdoor show for the Hold Steady last summer, their hypnotic spell seemed to have worn off. "Bad Blood", from forthcoming sophomore album Sleep Forever, is a wake-up call to a tauter, more urgent, and more vocal-driven Big Sleep-- like, never mind the psychedelic milk-clouds, here's the Irish coffee.

"Coffee & TV", even. The slightly dissonant opening electric guitar arpeggio recalls, surely coincidentally, some similar broken notes at the beginning of a certain Graham Coxon-penned 1999 Blur single. Rather than shift into a bouncy, warped indie-pop tune, though, the Big Sleep lunge through spiky lead guitar riffs and a cymbals-clanging chorus, until "Bad Blood" springs out of a bed a moody post-punk anthem that has more in common with Seattle's much-missed Pretty Girls Make Graves than-- wow, did I really mention Zeppelin last time? Guitarist Danny Barria sings lead on Sleep Forever's previously posted "Pinkies", but bassist Sonya Balchandan gets the nod this time. "There's trouble in my house," she repeats, sounding unfazed even as the pots and pans fly around her.

MP3:> The Big Sleep: "Bad Blood"
[from Sleep Forever; due 02/19/08 on Frenchkiss]