Easy Sleeper set an unusual scene in “Access Reply” with the musings of what sounds like a cog in a corporate bureaucracy lamenting his fate in the dull end of the legal department. Guided along this path of middle American mediocrity by slinky guitar dynamics and melancholic atmospherics that almost sound sardonic in tone. Twee guitar floats into passages of playful introspection at times and helps to establish a borderline surreal tone like the theme music for the life of Griffin Dunne’s character Paul Hackett in After Hours (1985) in his everyday life when he’s not bumping into weirdos in a single night of adventure in an otherwise bland and predictable existence as a computer data entry worker at a time when that still might pay well. Musically it sounds like what Protomartyr or Pavement might do if they decided to take Patrick Bateman’s love of beige 80s pop seriously for the purposes of writing a song commenting on being a corporate drone rebelling in the ways one can and still hold down a “real” job. The line in this song that serves as a chorus “I just whisper and I’m wistful, then I hinder and I’m wasteful” really gives you a peek into the head space of the subject of the song. Maybe that hindering and being wasteful is the least dramatic form of rebellion but one that begins by speaking softly and fantasizing at least a little about the possibility of a more fulfilling life. Listen to “Access Reply” on YouTube and follow Easy Sleeper at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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