By: Julia Simon
The Fever may hail from the city that never sleeps, but you’d never know it from the title of this New York City quartet’s sophomore full-length. In the City of Sleep finds frontman Geremy Jasper obsessing over what a postmodern metropolitan wasteland might look like (suspicion runs deep here where the barkeep midgets utter tall tales, buzzards drink from dumpsters, vampires are teething, and the undesirables come to play) and how after-hours cabaret rhapsodies might sound (scary with xylophones, marimbas, piano, accordions, and scrap-metal percussion).
Soundtracking our nightmares seems to come easy for Jasper, who reportedly suffered bouts of insomnia while conceiving the album. He took to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and that thoroughfare’s surrounding dilapidated sprawl to pass sleepless nights, his restlessness perhaps associated with the departure of guitarist Chris Sanchez early last year. But the setback served to solidify his current cast, which is rounded out with med-school grad and organ player J. Ruggiero, professional electrician and beat-keeper Achilles Tzoulafis, and bassist/guitarist Keith Stapleton. Their cinematic touches combined with Jasper’s literary lines have even been worked into the album’s impressive, Baz-Luhrmann-inspired artwork, which Jasper calls “Lewis Carroll in Metropolis.” In the City of Sleep just might be a rabbit hole of an album, transporting listeners to a dualistic, slightly absurd, and mostly strange wonderland.
The Fever tour dates:
5/12, Pomona, CA (The Glasshouse) 5/13, West Hollywood, CA (Troubadour)5/14, Solana Beach, CA (Belly-Up Tavern)5/16, San Francisco, CA (Bottom of the Hill)5/18, Portland, OR (Berbati’s Pan)5/19, Seattle, WA (El Corazon)5/22, Calgary, AB (The Warehouse)5/23, Edmonton, AB (The Starlite Room)5/24, Regina, SK (The Distrikt)5/25, Winnipeg, MB (Pyramid Caf�)5/26, Minneapolis, MN (Varsity Theatre)5/27, Chicago, IL (Beat Kitchen)5/29, London, ON (Call the Office)5/30, Toronto, ON (The Reverb)5/31, Ottawa, ON (Babylon)6/1, Quebec City, QC (L’Anti)6/2, Montreal, QC (Cabaret)6/3, Boston, MA (Axis)6/4, Philadelphia, PA (First Unitarian Church)
