The Big Sleep
Rock & Roll Hotel, Thursday, October 11
[buy from insound]

Brooklyn band The Big Sleep has earned a reputation as a face-melting hard-rock act, but that's not the whole story. Menacing bass lines, riveting feedback and searing guitar sequences make up the trio's basic vocabulary, but as its debut, Son of the Tiger (Frenchkiss), reveals, the group tempers its sludgy tendencies with shoegaze-style effects and psych adventures. The result is a rare hybrid of dreamy and heavy, a sound that is somehow vile and soothing at once. The band's monstrous live show is a transporting experience.... Illuminated from the floor as if playing in a creepy, lantern-lit barn, the threesome is deceptively powerful. Building slowly on a simple bass line or an unassuming synth effect, they eventually assault the room with a wall of jagged noise that escalates even further with guitarist Danny Barria's soaring solos. And then, the decibel level abates, gradually lowering to mellow grooves that frame bassist Sonya Balchandani's blunt, understated vocals. Even though its high-low roller coaster scrambles the stomach as thoroughly as a metal band might, the Big Sleep shows just how delicate the heavy stuff can be. [Time Out NY]