Review: Awake and Alert - Devil in a Lambskin Suit

Label: Five One

Released: September 11, 2007

Awake and Alert's music centers around Maya Peart's voice. She has great range and movement and is as dynamic and smooth as a jazz vocalist, but at the same time, her voice is down to earth as if she's singing right to you. Unlike many gifted singers, she also trusts her voice enough to let it sneak into and around the music rather than showing it off selfishly. That's what really makes Awake and Alert special. Peart's voice may be the core, but it never tries to stand alone. It works with the band and is inseparable from it.

Like the subtleties of Peart's voice, the music is surprisingly intricate when you listen closely. Blake Kimball's atmospheric echoey guitar has shades of the Edge and its interplay with the rest of the band is often delicate, but never safe. The music moves around a lot, with parts coming and going. They facilitate this by abandoning the standard verse-chorus-verse structure and instead packing a lot of music into average length songs. The various parts don't have clear boundaries, but transition smoothly, almost unnoticed. It's interesting that each great component becomes clear while something else great is occurring and they manage to fit it all in without overload.

Awake and Alert have managed to create something complex without being ponderous. If I had to peg it, it'd be indie rock, but that definition, as much of a catch-all as it is, is just too limiting. It fails to account for jazz and blues and their sheer ability to ignore barriers and go where the music takes them. It is living music that flows within itself like blood flows within the body.

Rating: 8/10

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