Ben Lee
Deeper into Dream
(Dew Process/Universal)
He may be most famous for a record called Awake is the New Sleep, but Ben Lee is downright fixated on what happens when we’re snoozing. His self-produced eighth album plunges into swirling, free-flowing pop while Lee meditates on close-knit themes. It’s bookended and punctuated in the middle with various people recounting their own quirky dreams, coalescing in a warm vibe of interconnectivity.
As much therapy for Lee as songwriting, Deeper into Dream follows three years of dream analysis with a therapist who died after a sudden stroke last year. So death is a theme here. But so is birth, thanks to the arrival of Lee’s daughter Goldie in 2009.
Working with his longtime collaborators in his home studio in California’s historically musical Laurel Canyon, Lee sounds all too comfortable. He’s always had an intuitive grasp of emotional melodies, but these songs are so unified that they really do feel like one extended, sleep-ensconced narrative. Revealing different ages and accents, the spoken recollection of dreams may not be ideal for repeated visits, but they’re essential to setting the scene on first listen and easy enough to skip later.
How about the songs? They’re vintage Ben Lee, setting shaky vulnerability to indie pop confection that’s got more depth than it initially lets on. For all the cuddly slightness of his delivery, these songs are lushly rendered and pool in stream-of-consciousness reflection that’s more meaningful as a whole. The shimmering title track confirms the album’s preoccupations early, and from there Lee dwells on birth on the Ben Folds-ish ‘Lean Into It’, layers his singing with falsetto against the slow-mo hook of ‘Pointless Beauty’, doles out classically cut pop on ‘When the Lights Goes Out’, gets romantic on ‘Glue’ and finds meatier success with ‘The Church of Everybody Else’.
The second half is a little weaker, from the wane “yeah-eah”s of ‘I Want My Mind Back’ to even the Nick Lowe-ish guitar-pop bustle of ‘Get Used to It’. But Lee finds nagging pop hooks and sneaky profoundness in every available corner, and it’s hard to fault his work when it’s so sweetly streamlined while taking so much on board. If it sounds feather-weight at times, that’s because Lee makes it look easier than it is.
Doug Wallen
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Ben Lee - 'Get Used To It'