The Sleeper

Burton upon Trent is not merely a market town somewhere off the A38. It’s where Branston Pickle was invented. It’s also home to Nick Hemming, one half of The Leisure Society - and (I contend) the most exciting thing to happen to the Midlands (apart from the invention of Branston Pickle) since the Battle of Bosworth. Christian Hardy shares the Presidency of the Society. Together they are the centrifugal force around which elements of Brighton’s Wilkommen collective swirl. The result is a lovingly crafted, tender folk record that will secure them as a named brand on the shelves of pop. There’s something very English about The Leisure Society. It’s that ability to blend humour with dark and sober reflection. This delicate creature is then carefully wrapped with tender caution into a comfortable jacket of lush harmonies. It is in parts comic, run through with sadness and everywhere thoughtful.

Hemming was once in a band with the actor Paddy Constanine and the director Shane Meadows. As a result of that brief union, he produced the soundtrack to Room for Romeo Brass and Dead Man’s Shoes and this experience perhaps goes some way to explain The Sleeper’s cinematic quality. This album grows and builds and ebbs and fades in a way that makes it much more than the sum of its constituent parts.

From the outset of ‘Give Yourself a Fighting Chance’, you are transported to another world. Glockenspiels and banjos and pianos and rousing choral melodies usher you through a lyrical rubrics cube of emotions. From the ethereal ‘Last of the Melting Snow’ to the sinister lullaby of ‘Darkest Place’, this is a record born of painstaking care throughout. ‘In a Matter of Time’ is a soaring foot tapping, thigh slapping folk anthem of soul searching.

The Sleeper is a record that sings of spring from the depths of winter. It’s accomplished and self assured whilst exposing of its own fragility. Hemming and Hardy have penned the first chapter of a great romance. The love affair begins.