Fell Asleep in the Sun- Afters Album Review

After – Fell Asleep in the Sun

After releasing two self-titled EPs last year that established their lush, digital sound inspired by late 90s trip-hop and early aughts pop-rock, you could not fault After for settling into their sound on their first full-length effort, Fell Asleep in the Sun, released on Mom+Pop this September. While the Los Angeles duo of Justine Dorsey and Graham Epstein feel comfortable within their sound, they are not afraid to expand and venture into unfamiliar territory within this project. 

 

The first five tracks on the album perfectly expand on the group’s existing sound. The title track, Take Me to Sunrise, showcases much of the depth added on these songs compared to After’s prior releases, with strong synth strings underscoring Dorsey’s vocals on this and many of the other tracks. Dorsey herself tends to stay within her upper register, evoking pop singers like Avril Lavigne or even early Taylor Swift. Her voice adds an ethereal, floating element to the electronic arrangements, remaining smooth while never really straining or tensing throughout the album’s run. The meticulous production on songs like Metal and Fitfully feature carefully placed synth hits and bells alongside crunchy breakbeats and gentle pop-rock riffs, making these songs fit perfectly into the group’s visual aesthetic of early 2000’s web design. 

 

Around the sixth track, however, you begin to sense that After is more than willing to explore something new. The laid back, latin-style guitar on Do or Die eventually gives way to Secret love song, an ambient movement into the album’s second half. It opens with the distorted guitar and bitcrushed vocals of Open Water, a song that would fit right in on a stalwart trip-hop album like Esthero’s Breath from Another, before transitioning to a pop rock song in Blind, with flanger-y guitars that sound ripped from the pedalboard of Alvvays. These are two of the strongest tracks on Fell Asleep in the Sun, ones that show After has more than one sound to offer and potentially explore in future releases. 

 

Overall, this is an exciting first album. It is easy to look at After as a group capitalizing on the new resurgence of “Y2K” nostalgia, but their music still stands out when removed from that context. There are times when the album sounds same-y, even with the added depth, which (for better or worse) makes the second half’s deviancies stand out even more. Fell Asleep in the Sun serves more as a proof of concept for the group – a foundation to further develop their sound in a longer album or narrative-driven format – than a groundbreaking debut release.

 

Nonetheless, it is a great listen for those interested in exploring trip-hop, downtempo, or indietronica adjacent sounds, and one well-suited for a walk across campus on a sunny day, or windows-down afternoon drive through BloNo in the fall. I give this a 7.8/10, and look forward to whatever sonic direction After chooses to take from here on out. 

 

~trip @boymobbing