With a blend of emotional lyrics, energizing guitars, and thumping beats that mirror the heart of the universe, Sandman Sleeps delivers the next great addition to the indie/alt-rock world with Crisis Actor. The debut album from the band – guitarist and vocalist Christina Peck, her bassist sister Alex Peck, drummer Karesten Andersen, and guitarist Zack Jones – incorporates cutting post-punk attitudes with haunting vocal arrangements straight out of 90s college rock to create a sound that is both timeless and relevant to today. With themes of fear of a modern world, the drifting hold on reality, and the ever-present pressures of love, Crisis Actor shines like a newly formed star in a dark expanse.
“Crisis Actor is the accumulation of two years of living in unprecedented uncertainty,” drummer Karsten Andersen tells HollywoodLife. “Being unable to play shows, we focused all of our time and energy making the album sound the best we could because we could all die at any moment. We’re still alive now but our vinyl won’t be out for another 8 months so we’ll surely be dead by then. Bye-bye cruel world.”
While fans may pick up on a few concurrent motifs and ideas woven throughout the ten tracks, guitarist Christina Peck tells HollywoodlIfe that there was no intent to make a concept album. “Since the songs on this album were written at different times over the course of 12 years,” she says, “each song is more so its own entity and atmosphere versus a continuation of a theme.” Yet, the conceptual continuity runs strong. Crisis Actor is an exhilarating experience from start to end, a seamless blend of post-punk, indie-rock, and alternative boldness that will reward the listener to the very end.
The name may alarm those, at first glance. It’s a loaded phrase, for sure, but it captures the disillusion within everyone in Sandman Sleeps. “The name Crisis Actor was suggested by our drummer, Karsten, and we all thought it was a great umbrella for this batch of songs we decided to make up the album,” says Christina Peck. “It’s pretty ambiguous in meaning just as most of the lyrics in the songs and since this isn’t a concept album by any means the title didn’t have a particular time period to relate to. Crisis Actor to us means more so just the ‘face of something’ and the ambiguity in that itself.
Crisis Actor proves that anxiety and uncertainty can be captured in slow beats and hypnotic lyrics. “Induced,” sonically, is a slow groove, but one that seems to amplify the internal pressure until the final release. The album opener, “Soaked,” begins like a slow stalk, a dark creature hunting its prey, before kicking into the fast-paced “Feet.” There are different moods and modes in this album, but never does it feel disjointed.
“There are many times when performing these ten songs comprising Crisis Actor where I feel like I’m playing one of those video games where once you start you have to chug as fast as you can because if you stop you’ll get eaten by the left side of the screen,” she adds. “I feel like the album documents this sense of urgency and our band stylistically.”
Crisis Actor is out on March 26.