On appleby’s newest release, the six-song While You Were Sleeping EP, the L.A. by way of Chicago artist renders an intimate vignette of a homecoming teeming with optimism. Written during a period in which both appleby and the girl he loves were visiting family — her in Jamestown, Rhode Island and he in Elgin, Illinois — back in the same room he’d wrote his first songs in. While You Were Sleeping, with its dreamy electronic soundscapes made that much more lush by elements of R&B, soul, and pop slipped into them, hones in on those overflowing feelings of love that can only be confessed under the intimate and vulnerable cover night.
Tracks like the “You’re My Home” soothe via appleby’s tender instrumentation and dulcet cooing; while others like the thrumming beats of “Heavy Metal Spaceship” grow sonorously within the cavernous depths of its buzzing electronics, moving to crescendo as appleby ruminates over the decisions and dreams that beamed him away from home in the first place. But the EP isn’t just affectionate retrospection — appleby is all blissful celebration on the sunny ecstatics that shimmering and shout on “Enough,” or even on the more subdued “HEAT” with its gilded guitar riffs and spacey sonics.
“Nearly every night we’d FaceTime till sunrise then say our goodbyes in the AM,” appleby said of the trip and keeping in touch with his partner. “Halfway through my trip I began muting myself while she slept. The first song I made was ‘You’re My Home.’ I was obsessed with how warm and nostalgic it felt. The next evening I wrote ‘Enough,’ and when I said good morning to my girlfriend the next day I knew those two songs were the beginning of my next EP.”
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Listen to appleby’s new EP While You Were Sleeping below!
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