When it comes to solo ambient guitar projects, successful albums are few and far between. This lack of success probably rests on the fact that when they do succeed, it occurs primarily in one of two realms, which are either sleepy-time music designed to accompany (what else?) sleep, or the cinematic, where an artist endeavors to put their ambient noodlings to use with a film. Clayton McEvoy of California, known here as Sleeping Me, skates minimally past both of these realms of expression. On Cradlesongs, McEvoy is cinematic, yet without the ability to fully capture the visual imagination, but unfortunately too plain to soundtrack dreams properly.

Cradlesongs is a decent display of what one can do with a guitar and a buttload of effects, but pretty much stops there. On “First Cell, First Love”, there is a nice balance between the forlorn and the hopeful, but some clipping in the lower registers draws a critical eye toward the low production value. What’s nice is that McEvoy doesn’t range too far outside his skill level on the guitar. On “Legs Like Gravestone” (great title, by the way), McEvoy builds layers of guitar wash into what might be the beginning of a Taka Goto track of guitar wall-of-sound, but leaves it at that; it travels nowhere. While this album somehow reminds me of the transitional montage soundtrack pieces to Noah Baumbach’s first film Kicking & Screaming, aiming for a flashback on love’s inception, I feel left expecting more.

The problem with Cradlesongs is that it doesn’t build enough tension. It doesn’t hang the listener from the 103rd-story-balcony for minutes on end to ponder their fate, but instead floats just above the ground floor flower boxes, admiring the slow hum of the light refracting off of petals. The album is a solid effort, but falls sadly short of the impact of a record like Brian McBride’s When the Detail Lost its Freedom. Sure, it might be unfair to compare a relative newcomer to an accredited master of the genre, but with dreamtime ambience, I think it necessary to set the bar high, because you have to manipulate a minimum of tones and sounds into a monstrously gripping force. Where McBride is obviously crafty at this, McEvoy still needs some more seasoning.

-Gabriel Bogart