Experimenting with genre fusing and bending seems to have become the latest musical fad. If Screamo and elements of Math and Hardcore variety meets Post-Rock build-ups sounds like your idea of a bad gimmick, perhaps Dreamwell‘s sophomore album, In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You will come as a pleasant surprise. Through all 47 minutes, the act showcase a highly skilled and self aware approach by intentionally dismantling stylistic boundaries. Such offbeat display doesn’t come often but when it does, I find it is easier to surrender myself and allow every part of every genre work its strength. There is a strong sense of cohesion to Dreams with a variety of insistent themes throughout the 11 guitar driven songs, often surprisingly tied together by disorienting time signatures and stream of consciousness lyrical tropes. Vocalist Keziah “KZ” Staska sings about fingers, and hands, touch and connection or lack of, and viscerally investigates what living with borderline personality disorder feels like.
Dreams start off on an almost indie note on “Good Reasons to Freeze to Death”, allowing hopeful Post-Rock guitars to take you to a familiar place. The cord that binds this album to any convention is quickly and severely ruptured some 40 seconds in; delving into blast beats and abrasive screams, constantly changing direction, the band allow their chaotic creative energy to lift this album into surprising territories. Using lyrical repetitions and juxtapositions, they deceive with a false sense of security before slamming one against the walls once more. Whilst navigating my way through this intricate balance, at times I found myself on the edge of wishing Dreams went heavier, but eventually this also started feeling like a calculated move on Dreamwell‘s behalf. The album carries on in this vein of confusion (perhaps less so on “Reverberations of a Sickly Wound”, which provides a much needed instrumental interval) and ends with what I can only define as Screamo Prog seven minute epic conclusion that is “Rue de Noms (Could have Been Better, Should have been More)”. The track coils around a bass motif backbone and this time slowly shapeshifts, touching upon Post-Hardcore and Black Metal. From halfway through it goes into a crescendo, and I was expecting it to burst into bliss, but was left with a pervasive sense of…well, sadness. Through bits of broken glass that shift and mutate with every listen, Dreamwell have managed to create something entirely beguiling: a kaleidoscope of an album that exists at the intersection of harshness and tenderness, frailty and corrosiveness, want of control and complete abandonment.
