ALBUM REVIEW: In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You – Dreamwell
It was pretty obvious that DREAMWELL were onto something special when they released Modern Grotesque back in 2021. Technically now counted as their debut – presumably because it was when they solidified their line-up and because their original first LP was actually meant to be a demo – it wasn’t just a promising record, it was a genuinely great one, but it still felt like a safe bet that the Providence-based post-hardcore outfit would one day surpass it. Hopefully this is a gigantic hint at exactly what happens on In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You, but just to be clear, the band’s first release for Prosthetic Records isn’t just a step up on its already stellar predecessor, it’s one of the best and most ambitious records of the year.
Yes, those are big and perhaps overused words, but In My Saddest Dreams… really is one of those records like a Chaos Is Me or a Self Portrait or even a We Are The Romans, wherein its creators understand that ‘post-hardcore’ is less about ticking a few stylistic boxes – which, for the record, are all ticked here – and has more to do with pushing at the edges and expanding the form and conventions of the subgenre. It’s an album of huge scope, with influences drawn not only from emo and screamo and chaotic metallic hardcore, but also bits of doom, blackgaze, post-rock and so much more – all deftly and carefully woven together with clear and considerable thought to concepts like flow and juxtaposition and contrast as opposed to the kitchen sink approach many other bands end up going for.
Across 46 minutes, DREAMWELL demonstrate a mastery of beautiful and delicate melodicism and hair-raising violence alike, sometimes one after the other, sometimes all at once. Opener Good Reasons To Freeze To Death is breathtaking from the outset, at first all light and dreamy and sparkling but soon enough erupting into bracing yet ecstatic blackgaze sharpened by the visceral shrieks of vocalist KZ Staska. It has a particular impact as the first track on the record, but the band never struggle to match it. Lord Have MRSA On My Soul’s lurch from melodic emo into dissonant madness, the desperate and punishing All Towers Drawn In The Equatorial Room that follows, the dynamic, doomy menace of I Dream’t Of A Room Of Clouds – any track could be a highlight on any given listen, which is perhaps the clearest sign of a work best digested as a whole.
Central to this too is the concept at the heart of the record, namely “an exploration of the hardships encountered whilst navigating interpersonal relationships through the static of Borderline Personality Disorder”. The narrative is loose by design, but as the album’s central character struggles to differentiate between imagination and reality, the tension and turmoil within the music feels like a true reflection of this; the often intentionally jarring shifts from one state of being to another, for example, or the moments where one aspect of the sound may hint at something grand or expansive or even fleetingly uplifting even as all manner of chaos and violence rages away beneath it. In lead single Obelisk Of Hands, for example, savage metallic hardcore wrestles with soaring melodies and beautiful clean vocals from Logan St. Germain of ANKLEBITER, unpredictable and enrapturing all at once much like this album in its entirety.
The aforementioned Staska is particularly mesmeric throughout – a hugely versatile vessel through which the themes and stories of In My Saddest Dreams… are communicated. Shouts, screams, clean vocals and spoken parts all find their place in the record, each employed in accordance with what both music and lyrics may call for. On the latter, Staska is equally brilliant – often deeply poetic but sometimes just as willing to settle for the blunt power of a line like “I would bash my skull against a brick wall if you told me happiness might leak out” or the devastating “I know it’s pathetic how much of my happiness hinges on the thought of being loved” in the absolute catharsis-fest that is the album’s seven-minute closer Rue De Noms (Could Have Been Better, Should Have Been More).
It would probably take about five more reviews to capture the full scope of In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You. On a musical level alone there is so much going on here, and with just as much emotion and thought and ambition poured into every other facet of this record there can be no mistaking it for anything other than a modern classic. DREAMWELL have unquestionably surpassed the considerable expectations they set with 2021’s Modern Grotesque, and quite possibly all other albums to have fallen somewhere under the vague and vast umbrella of post-hardcore within the past year or even considerably longer.
Rating: 10/10
In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You is set for release on October 20th via Prosthetic Records.
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