Having refined their method of catharsis somewhat on 2014's
Unravelling, anthemic Edinburgh indie rockers
We Were Promised Jetpacks continue to streamline on their fourth outing,
The More I Sleep, The Less I Dream. Taking an intentional turn toward a more introspective and mature sound, the band enlisted American producer, Jonathan Low, hoping to tap into some of the textural moodiness he helped bring to bands like
the War on Drugs and
the National. For a band who formed during high school and have kept their fire burning for 15 years, the members' collective aging into their thirties was bound to yield a tonal sea change. In the years since
Unravelling's release, the quartet purportedly wrote and scrapped an entire album's worth of songs before landing on the ten tracks collected here. Themes of change and the sometimes-melancholic settling into adult life are at the heart of
The More I Sleep, which wrestles in some of the band's signature sonic yaw without diminishing its potency too greatly. Recorded in Philadelphia and New York's Hudson Valley, the album's sessions took place in early 2018 and have a focused and distinctly polished feel. That's not to say that
WWPJ's fury is entirely absent, just more tightly wound, especially on standouts like the clever "In Light" and the surprisingly jagged "Repeating Patterns," which is easily the album's more combustible track. Still, things do drag somewhat on some of the more reflective cuts which lock into amiable if unobtrusive mid-tempo grooves from which they can't seem to escape. As a whole, there is plenty of growth, craft, and quality songwriting here even if the approach is more polite than it used to be. ~ Timothy Monger