Review Summary: It sounds like heaven to me.
In most cases, it’s not hard to identify a good album after a few careful listens. But staying power and legacy often isn’t evident until much later, and many an album is hastily declared a “modern classic," then quickly forgotten. A truly great record is one that doesn’t exhaust its charms after dozens of listens; you become, in a sense, married to it. Your relationship with the music might start with a fiery love affair, or it might be a tenuous, slow-boiling affection, but it always changes over time to become something much deeper and enduring than you’d expect.
Come Now Sleep is one of those records. The peak of a brilliant but unstable band’s creative output, the 2007 record is no less startlingly fresh and innovative in 2015. Its influence is widespread but hard to quantify because so many artists inspired by it are too afraid to deliberately replicate much of its ambition. Come Now Sleep is a truly outstanding record that resides in the sparsely-occupied realm of progressive indie rock.
Its landscape is marked by songs that eschew conventional structure without alienating the listener or seeming pretentious; twisting, melodic guitar leads that are inspired by classic emo and post-hardcore without being beholden to either of them; and a remarkably coherent blend of furious, hard-hitting indie rock and atmospheric post-rock. Beautifully produced and packed with terrific musicianship, Come Now Sleep blazes a stark trail that few have attempted to follow.
As Cities Burn’s debut, Son I Loved You At Your Darkest, was an impressive album of progressive hardcore that stands on its own much better ten years after its release. Unfairly compared to metalcore artists like Underoath, who have only the most superficial of similarities (largely due to the vocal style), Son’s tracks were short, technically impressive workouts that often crammed stark stylistic changes into a single song. While much ballyhoo was made about the stylistic change between the group’s first and second albums, these charges are completely overblown; Come Now Sleep is the logical next step for a screamo band that lost its screamer. All of the inventive song structures and energetic songs are still here, they’ve just been adapted to an indie rock aesthetic and given a bit more room to breathe and experiment compared to this album's predecessor.
Opening track "Contact" exemplifies the album’s more subdued side: frontman Cody Bonnette’s warm, melodic guitar lines usher in the song, which organically evolves over the course of six minutes between at least five distinct sections, blending earnest, emotive vocals with pleasing musicianship. The next three tracks kick Come Now Sleep into high gear with a fiery assault of searing guitars, cynical vocals and lyrics, and inventive drumming.
"Empire" is immediate and catchy, but matches its instant appeal with great instrumentation and an earnest desperation in its eye-of-the-storm bridge: “My heaven tower sways, atop their fleeting praise; God, I don’t know how I was made…” A furious guitar blast opens "The Hoard," easily the album’s most aggressive song and one of its highlights, which proves bassist Colin Kimble and drummer Aaron Lunsford can go toe-to-toe with the guitars for grabbing the listener’s attention. And "This Is It, This Is It" throws snarling guitar interludes between the desperate verses, surely inspiring many an aspiring indie rock axe-wielder.
Spoken-word samples recorded in Atlanta, Georgia open "Clouds," which gives the album some breathing room right on schedule, across a track that builds to an emotive climax with some impressive guitar playing that never overstays its welcome. "Tides" returns to the punchy attack of the record’s first half before the minor-key "Wrong Body," a subtle contender for the best song on the album. It matches Cody's heartfelt lyrics with swerving guitar leads that culminate in a fantastic instrumental explosion near the end. And "Timothy" - nearly long enough to be a prog-rock epic - brings the album to a grandiose close, an intimate tribute to a friend of the band who committed suicide that morphs into atmospheric post-rock in its second half.
What As Cities Burn does so well compared to artists with similar ambitions, is to organically blend their sophisticated instrumentation with with evocative songwriting. Their music and musicianship are seamlessly integrated in a way which would evoke envy from your average math-rock band. Thrust into the spotlight after his screaming brother TJ’s departure, Cody Bonnette is an unassuming frontman, but his distinct vocals and inventive guitar playing absolutely define Come Now Sleep. And I’d be remiss not to mention his lyricism: as someone who rarely pays much attention to lyrics in music, Come Now Sleep is, for me, a rare album with words that stand out over dozens of listens over the past six years.
For a supposedly Christian band, As Cities Burn often sound doubtful ("Contact," "Clouds"), cynical ("Empire," "The Hoard"), or pessimistic ("Wrong Body"). Years removed from the album’s release have given a bit more context for Cody’s songwriting and thought process. After a successful tenth-anniversary tour for their first album, Cody gave some illuminating insight in a podcast interview where he revealed that after years of struggling with doubt and disappointment in his faith, and suffering through a divorce and collapse of his band, Cody has a peace and assurance in his faith that’s in stark contrast to the turbulent days when Come Now Sleep was written.
Fortunately for the listener, that struggle makes Come Now Sleep even more compelling as it confronts issues that many Christians would prefer to sweep under the rug, rather than directly address and work through - such as doubt, hypocrisy, loss, and struggle with personal sin. Although each of As Cities Burn’s albums are more than worth your time, Come Now Sleep is the group at its peak. It's more sophisticated and developed compared to Son I Loved You At Your Darkest, and more coherent and atmospheric than Hell Or High Water (which has plenty of great songs, but which is something of a disjointed mess and clearly the product of a band falling apart.) This is that rare recording where every element - the lyrics, songwriting, musicianship, and production - beautifully comes together for an unforgettable album. And even if you don’t think you’re interested in self-critical Christian indie rock, you still owe it to yourself to give Come Now Sleep a careful listen - you might find yourself unexpectedly impressed.
