Perhaps the most reflective moments of our lives are lived in the minutes before sleep completely drowns out our consciousness. We are forced to face our thoughts and at the same timeadmit that sleep will soon wash them all away. Armor for Sleep is about capturing these moments.
It's rare these days to find a band that interlaces a theme or common thread throughout the lyrical fabric of its songwriting. And it is precisely this regard for literary techinique that immediately sets Armor for Sleep apart from so many of its contemporaries. Singer and songwriter, Ben Jorgensen's lyrics abound with images of space, time-travel, and dreams. He incoparates these metaphorical motifs throughout many of his songs to express solitude and disaffection in a manner that not only shedsnew light on these ideas, but also poignantly hits the proverbial nail ont he head. Jorgensen correlates emotional alienation to physical insignificance in the scope of the cosmos,he sees the worldof escape but also of trepidation and he uses the bitter cold of winter to parallel the bitter cold of human condition.
Musically, Armor for Sleep's style is dark and delicate, but at the same time painfully distant. The guitars can be as remote as the lyrics and then unexpectedly explode into melodic phrases. There is a , meticulously crafted dynamic of ambient and airy spaces combined with choruses that are heavy and driving and at times reminiscent of early Sunny Day Real Estate. The amazing thing though, is how infectious the songs are, and how they can be so without being the least bit poppy or generic. The songwriting will immediately draw you in, but it is the vocals that keep you there. Jorgensen's voice has a quality and a natural tone that soothes, but at the same time overruns with anxiety as one notices the intense emotion fueling it.
A year and a half ago, while spending a summer isolated from everything his room and his mother's accoustiv guitar, Ben Jorgensen decided to translate his feelings of disafection and indifference into songs. Playing all the instruments himself, Jorgensen recorded two songs at a nearby recording studio for one hundred dollars. A month later he entered a whole new realm of alienation as a freshman in college. Joregensen's shy nature precluded him from making many friends and thus had trouble finding people to start a band with. After several unsucessful attempts, Joregensen finally found three other people who were not only skilled and experienced players, but also shared his philosophies on music and friendship. He enlisted Anthony DiInno to play bass and cousins Nash Breen and P.J. DeCicco to play drums and guitar, respectively.
Like any other band trying to get started, Armor for Sleep began playing shows and circulating homemade copies of their demo. But soon an unprecedented buzz grew around the band that saw kids showing an inmass numbers with A and R guys in toe courting the band for major labels.
In the summer of 2002, in the midst of all the frenzy and commotion, Armor picked up and left for California to record an album that would be their debut. They stayed on friend's floors and couches for a month while working diligently to finish 11 songs that would come constitute to the album, Dream to Make Believe. When they returned, int he fall with the fruits of their labor in-hand they were more confident in who they were in a band and what they wanted.
Before leaving California,Armor had with indie label Equal Vision Records and was impressed with the ethics and ideals by which the company was run. That along with the label's hard work and willingness to give the band a great deal for control led to Armor for Sleep to decide on Equal Vision as its home.
At this time, copies of Dream to Make Believe were being circualted among kids and members of other bands, and soon Armor for Sleep was receiving tour offers wihtout even having any sort of record out. Armor got a chance to tour with: Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, Recover, Piebald, Hey Mercedes, and played with countless others. The things that was msot rewarding, and perhaps most bizarre, is that at so many of these shows, kids in far away states were coming out to see Armor for Sleep play, and were singing along to songs they had downloaded from copies of their first demo.
It is not uncommon to see a band develop a good buzz and grow quickly, but it is virtually unheard of for this kind of hype to surround a band that has yet to release even a single. If all this commotion is any indication of things to come, then the future will be promising for this group of four kids from New Jersey. But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is to make music that is sincere and that connects the band to strangers-and to be able to do so under your own terms. At the tender age of 19 and 20, the members of Armor for Sleep seem to already mastered the art and learned valuable lessons in the business of music. And they haven't even started yet. Dream to Make Believe is scheduled for release in early summer 2003 on Equal Vision.
