The Last Mixed Tape reviews Be Kind, the debut studio album from dream-pop three-piece Beauty Sleep.
Be Kind is the type of album you just want to delve right in to. Brimming to the top with deep dreamy sounds, Beauty Sleep’s first offering is a lush love-letter to pop music delivered with a clear joie de vivre from start to finish.
There’s a glistening dreamlike logic to the music of Be Kind. Throughout the album, synths flow and meld into guitar lines, while vocals float just above this texturally colourful backdrop. Cutting through this over-arching sonic milieu, Beauty Sleep adds disco overtones seen in tracks like lead single ‘The Dark’, the infectious chorus of ‘Nature Will Eat Me’, and the anthemic dynamic bursts found in ‘The Feeling Back’. This creates both a canvas and a flourishing effect that is Be Kind’s strongest characteristic.
Contrast this with the gentler, but by no means subdued, moments like the swaying soundscapes of ‘Woman’ and serene obscured feel of ‘Synthetic Debris’, and Be Kind pushes and pulls at the heart string with music that sounds like the people making it enjoyed every moment of making it, something that doesn’t always shine through in debut records.
Knowhere is the overall sonic purity of Be Kind better exemplified than in ‘Rainbow Ballroom’. All the hazy synths, duelling vocals, and funk guitar merge into one, covering the full spectrum as Beauty Sleep takes all the best aspects of pop music and put them through a starry-eyed prism of their own making.
A joy to listen to, Be Kind swings for the fences as Beauty Sleep throw hook after hook at the listener over the course of the album’s light-of-foot ten track running time, resulting in a record that draws you closer through clear charm, shimmering sounds and vivid vibrancy.
Rating: 9/10
Be Kind by Beauty Sleep is due out on May 17th via Quiet Arch Records.