Chasing That Feeling: A Brief Review Of The New Album From Business Of Dreams On Slumberland Records

A neat blend of chamber pop and bedsit indie, the new album from Business of Dreams, out on Friday, is another feather in the cap of Slumberland Records. And while lots of Ripe For Anarchy recalls Corey Cunningham's other bands (Smokescreens, Terry Malts), there's an elegance here that suggests nothing so much as the brighter numbers on that fab Young Guv record that Slumberland put out a couple of years ago.

"Chasing That Feeling" whirs and coos, a neat blend of power pop and modern indie, while the lush "Ripe For Anarchy" made me think of both O.M.D. and Death Cab For Cutie. Cunningham is using this material to work out questions of loss and grief, and a listener can easily appreciate how the bright sheen of these tunes is being used as a sort of counterpart to the emotions in the lyrics, like on the aching "Don't Let Our Time Expire", a Jimmy Webb-goes-electronic number here. Elsewhere, the shiny "Naive Scenes" stands out as a sort of neat amalgamation of Care and The Blue Nile, to use two easy points of comparison. To his credit, Corey Cunningham doesn't overdo things, the production and instrumentation serving these compositions, rather than simply being ends unto themselves. At his very best, like on the Joy Division-recalling "Keep The Blues Away", Corey Cunningham manages to make indie that stays just this side of ornate, the pop sense at work here a strong one.

Ripe For Anarchy is out on Friday via Slumberland Records.

[Photo: Uncredited promotional image]