Sleeping At Last (Music Review)

Sleeping At Last is the ingenious creation of singer-songwriter Ryan O’Neal, each song a masterpiece in it’s own right. 

Formed in 1999 by O’Neal, his brother Chad and Dan Perdue, they had a local following in their hometown of Wheaton, Illinois. After Chad and Dan departed to pursue other things, Ryan was left to continue working under the name and has since built up a global appreciation. 

At this point in time the music is reasonably well known, having featured in plenty of TV shows and adverts (Greys Anatomy fans will likely be quite familiar). In actual fact, I discovered O’Neal back in my Twilight days when my tastes weren’t very diverse at all. Part of me thinks that perhaps my love of other genres (besides the usual chart music) stemmed from the first time I heard ‘Turning Page’. 

“Your love is my turning page

Where only the sweetest words remain”

At the age of fifteen, the lyrics to many of Sleeping At Last’s songs didn’t make an awful lot of sense to me but as a young adult, they speak to my soul. I feel a strange sense of self-awareness, like I’m continuously discovering myself. In some ways, I feel rejuvenated and content. 

Each album consists of a compilation of EPs released over varied periods of time, with Atlas: Year One resulting in a total of thirty songs. Every EP has a theme and a vision, meaning that you’re not just listening, you’re experiencing the music. It’s as if you’re on a journey.

You would expect songs about life’s highs and lows to come across as cliche, but O’Neal somehow manages to avoid this and express meaning through haunting metaphors and images. He is producing what every musician should be striving for. 

His voice seems almost delicate, but there is an incredibly perfect balance of everything you could possibly want in a piece of music. I feel like I grow as a person, evolving along with each new release. 

“You taught me the courage of stars before you left.

How light carries on endlessly, even after death.

With shortness of breath, you explained the infinite.

How rare and beautiful it is to even exist”

The few covers O’Neal has done have given a whole new meaning to the songs. Take ‘500 Miles’ as an example, when I was growing up it was a song that would be on at school discos but this project has allowed him to turn it into a phenomenal piece of music that I imagine I will still listen to in fifty years time.

For songs that are so musically simple and straightforward, I’m left wondering how on earth O’Neal manages to provide us with something that is so artistically flawless. 

It’s not often that music can leave me completely blown away, but Sleeping At Last has done exactly that. 

Allow yourself to be introduced to these masterpieces here: https://soundcloud.com/sleepingatlast/tracks