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First off, Kelly Wingate is a band, not a person.  And their latest release, Are you sleeping, love? is bound to be one of the sleepers of the year. The CD, which was released late last year, will appeal to fans of bands like Low, Red House Painters, and even some of Jeff Buckley's work. Stylistically, it can probably best be defined as acoustic dream pop, a genre that is sometimes referred to as "slo-core" or "shoegazer" music.  But no matter what you call it, this is one fine CD.

At first listen, I really liked it...a lot.  But the more I listened, the more I fell in love with the band's sound, which while simple at times is not simplistic.  The band, hailing from Mississippi, has the duo of Trent Dabbs and Jonathan Shull at its core, with Dabbs handling the lead vocals. His voice is dreamy and melancholy all at once, and quite a pleasure to listen to.  Rounding out the band are Joey Pensak on drums, Adam White on bass, and Lizzie Perry, whose violin work adds an important element to the band's work.  A few other musicians pop up on the album including producer Nelson Hubbard and mixer Clay Jones.

The album starts off with a bang with the song "Stand Apart."  Like most of the album, these are songs of love lost, love found, love unrequited...and in some cases you're not sure which is which.  The singer is constantly looking inward, and at times the results are melancholy.  The song "Quilt" explores the issue of morality and especially the comfort in knowing one's place in eternity. 

At times the songs seem to take a fresh look at what some might assume to be the mundane elements of everyday life.  A case in point is "Photograph" in which the singer is haunted by a woman he spots in the background of a photograph.  There is no clue as to what the main subject of the photograph is, but he spots the girl and intones "The girl in the back of the photograph, who is she? There's a smile in the back of the photograph, it's killing me." 

The most "electric" of the songs on the album, "Thousand Circles," is perhaps one of the most enjoyable.  With its layered guitars and heavier drums, the song draws you in and has you tapping your toes.  It is a song that from first listen sounds familiar, yet it doesn't remind you of any other specific songs. 

Another glimpse of the issue of mortality and eternity comes in "Last Lullaby," the song from which the CD gets its title.  The singer is faced with the death of a very dear loved one: 

 Are you sleeping, love?
 Lifeless and staring into space
 I can see the healing now, spread across your face

The issue of how we often bottle up our emotions inside, and separate our public selves from our private selves is explored in "Outside."  The girl in the song is struggling with inner pain, but "She's got everything together, walking with a smile for the camera.  She'd never wanna make you cry," and later "She's not lying to anyone, just herself."

Kelly Wingate is a band that could, and should, be on the verge of something bigger.  It would be a shame if more people didn't get a chance to hear this disc.

Ken Mueller 1/28/2001

Kelly Wingate began as the brainchild of high school friends Trent Dabbs and Jonathan Shull.  The guitarists, along with drummer Joey Pensak, debuted the band at a cafe in the college town of Starkville, Mississippi, and worked for roughly a year without a bassist before enlisting mutual friend Adam White to fill the slot.  With White on board, the band worked to refine their live sound and eventually placed a tape of one of their concerts in the hands of Jackson, Mississippi, songwriter Neilson Hubbard.  Hubbard produced the group's 1999 independent debut, Palewaves, which was recorded at a studio in Memphis in less than a week.

Like its predecessor, the bulk of the sophomore release, Are You Sleeping, Love?, mirrors the sadcore/slow-core sound of artists like Low, Red House Painters and American Music Club.  Nearly all of the songs are rife with the ringing melody lines, slow-as-molasses guitar work and languorous musical pace that have come to typify the slow-core genre.  And the lyrics adapt the introspective, often depressive stance that has become part and parcel of the vast majority of sadcore artists. Songs like "Stand Apart," employ a droning, repetitive musical attack together with an almost stream of consciousness lyrical approach (Outside my window/ The ambulance down the street/ I watch it pass), while others, like "It's Not the Love," exhibit the lush, atmospheric musical backdrop and melancholy outlook (I'm not gonna make you care/ One less hurt inside of me/ It's my choices, I confess/ The results of this mess) that inform the lion's share of the Sleeping album. The group does step outside its slow-core margins here and there, though. "Last Lullaby" offers up a fine combination of Beatlesque tunefulness and major-to-minor chord changes, while the heavily arpegiated guitar structures on "Forgiven Sands" are built on the classic folk framework of artists like
Jim Croce and Dan Fogelberg.  And "Thousand Circles" harks back to the early '80s jangle pop of the dB's or REM by virtue of its uncharacteristically peppy percussion track and chiming, Byrdsian guitars.

But, while songs like these infuse Sleeping with an decidedly infectious pop sensibility, the album is still plagued by an abundance of weaker material. Although the low, twangy guitar sound and emotive violin work of "Guilt" are pleasant enough sonic treatments, they aren't able to make up for what is, underneath it all, a mostly uninteresting composition.  Likewise, the tiresome repetition of two chords on "Everything" quickly becomes tedious. And, over everything, the album is regrettably beset by a vocal attack that is, as often as not, noticeably out of tune.  Bright spots do exist.  The agile juxtaposition of pointed electric guitar and muted bass on 'Outside" forms a perfect counterpart to the song's soaring, and pleasantly unpredictable, melody line.  And "What It's Like" adds spot-on vocal work and perfectly placed violin embellishments to the song's pseudo-dissonant character to instill it with an almost hypnotic quality.  All in all, Are You Sleeping, Love? is a pleasant enough piece of work nearly across the board.  But despite its mostly agreeable musical and lyrical construction, the preponderance of overly nondescript material makes the second album a frustratingly inconsistent listen from start to finish.

Bert Gangl 1/28/2001