Wave Sleep Wave: Wave Sleep Wave

Wave Sleep Wave is the new project from Jerry Adler, formerly of indie rockers the Blam and his quieter solo project Flugente. This new foray into music features just Adler on guitar and vocals and drummer Yuval Lion, but you wouldn’t know this was a duo to hear it. Wave Sleep Wave is an expansive, grinding, haunting album, sounding as much like a Spaghetti Western soundtrack as a dingy basement show. Feedback swirls and scours these songs, while Adler’s guitars cut through the murk and over his whispery vocals. One song bleeds into the next and the whole thing seems to take on a bigger trajectory. The propulsive bounce of “Hey…What?” gives way to the shadowy, slowcore textures of songs like “Like Filings to Magnets” and “1001” before working its way back to energy and hope on the album closer “How Low?”. The album is a solid exercise in shaping big, seemingly formless noises into something sweet yet ragged. The pace may get stuck in that mid-tempo trudge in the records middle, but the layers here invite you to peel them back to find what’s under all these undulating sounds. And though you may find little clarity in the lyrics, there is something there, a feeling worth finding.