In this day and age, finding fun and contentment can be tricky. Creating an entire album dominated by these rare commodities feels like a relatively impossible task.
Beauty Sleep have always looked up to the challenge, to be fair. Cheylene and Ryan we knew as half of the sadly defunct neon fizzpop quartet The Wondervillains.
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They’ve maintained that endless positivity and those colourful personas - for new music recored with a friend they met at a house party, named Aimee.
In photos and onstage - Beauty Sleep look like a sort of hipster, ’Nu Rave’ (remember that?) trio, yet thankfully nowhere near as awful as that might sound.
Similarly, the music isn’t electronically aggressive - it’s bright without being crass, confidant without being arrogant.
Their debut album, called - almost inevitably - ‘Be Kind’, is adventurous and unpredictable, a dreamy, cosmic mess of great ideas. ’The Dark’ eases you in, Ryan urging listeners to ‘come a little closer’ throughout a sort of Hall & Oates synth and disco guitar workout. The vocals are shared between boy and girl(s) throughout - which only adds to the consistently curious shifts in tone.
Indeed ‘Rainbow Ballroom’ is an otherworldly lullaby of sorts, while showcasing a gloriously poppy chorus. Speaking of choruses - ‘I know there’s something out there / I could chase it for forever’ goes the killer line on ’The Feeling Back’, which acts as the album's heartbeat.
It illustrates beautifully this band’s endless optimism - and their patience in finding whatever it is they need. It’s a joy to listen to, frankly. Each song seems to fight over whether it could be a Christmas number one or a woozy summer banger, eventually calling it a draw.
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And Christmas songs and summer songs are always the best, right? Needless to say, by the end of the album, you’re utterly smitten. The splendidly titled ’Nature Will Eat Me’ is so shimmery the lyrics blend into a hypnotic musical heat wave while ‘Be Kind’ is a looping, self help mantra, the perfect conclusion, capturing this album’s entire ethos.
‘Be kinder to yourself", sings Ryan “I know that you’re trying hard“. Any other band and you’d dismiss such platitudes as unnecessary…. cheesy even. But with Beauty Sleep, the music matches the sentiment and they sound utterly sincere. Helpful, even.
It helps that the album is short and (very) sweet at 32 minutes long, Beauty Sleep aware that too much of a good thing can start to sicken the listener quite fast. When the point is made, each song knows to move on. Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock, knowing as I do these three hugely splendid human beings - but Beauty Sleep have created the reassuring record 2019 desperately needs.
Beauty Sleep’s debut album ‘Be Kind’ is out next Friday. The band play The Mac, Belfast on May 25th.
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