Sleeping at Last is best described as a musical project led by the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ryan O’Neal. It was originally formed in 1999 as an alternative-rock band based out of a suburban Chicago (Wheaton, Illinois) of three people, with Ryan O’Neal as the lead vocalist and guitarist, his brother Chad O’Neal as the drummer, and Dan Perdue as the bass player. Following the release of their first four albums, Chad O’Neal and Dan Perdue eventually left the band to pursue other interests. Ryan O’Neal chose to continue with his musical career and decided to keep the band’s name for his solo work. He continues making music to this day, but starting in 2011 with his 36-song project “Yearbook”, he has abandoned the industry standard of releasing an album every other year. Now he focuses on single songs and short EPs rather than traditional albums. In 2013, he began an extensive concept project, Atlas, which is an ongoing series of new music (consisting of EPs, singles, etc.) to be released over the course of several years. Atlas: Year One, which consists of 30 songs, was completed in early 2014, with songs and EPs having been released throughout 2013 until then. Currently, Sleeping at Last is working on Atlas: Year Two.
What started as an alternative band has progressed into a musical project that encompasses characteristics from not only alternative rock and indie rock, but a variety of other genres as well. One of these genres is “baroque pop”, a subgenre of pop rock which infuses rock and roll with elements of classical music. Another is “emo”, which is a style of rock music characterized by expressive, oftentimes confessional, lyrics. These descriptions of genre are useful is understanding the music of Sleeping at Last and Atlas.
O’Neal uses the freedom of his ongoing project, which has no deadline, to explore abstract themes of human existence through a musical perspective. In an explanation of his concept, O’Neal has wrote, “i wanted to create a project that allowed me endless room for exploration musically and thematically, while still coloring within the lines of an overarching theme. atlas gives me exactly that. the theme of “atlas” is the exploration of the origins, emergence and experiences of life.”
Each and every one of his songs has considerable thought behind it and is centered around lyrics with profound, heartfelt meaning. O’Neal gives detailed explanations of all his songs on the Sleeping at Last website, demonstrating the incredible thought and inspirations that go into his music. To express the deeper meanings of his songs, his lyrics rely heavily on symbolic language. Even O’Neal’s explanation of how to understand the concept is itself metaphoric and ambiguous: “imagine a camera lens pulled back as far as possible away from the universe. now imagine that lens being pulled closer and closer to us. that is the heart of atlas.” This is what he means: Atlas starts at the very beginning of the universe with an EP titled “Darkness”. It then goes onto the EP titled “Light”, then “Space”, then “Land”, and so on.
All of the individual songs in an EP touches upon a certain theme, and in an effort to explore such vast and incomprehensible topics, each song comes at its theme at a different angle. O’Neal describes this, saying that, “the songs for each ep will be inspired by their given theme from many different angles. for instance, the first ep, “darkness,” gives me an opportunity to explore interpretations of what darkness is: it’s the unknown, it’s blindness, it’s sorrow, it’s loss, but also it’s beginnings.”
The opening track of “Darkness”, Overture, epitomizes Sleeping at Last’s beautifully metaphoric language with one crucial line: “even with all our history, we barely caught a glimpse of what it means, in the architecture of the soul, the universe began with our eyes closed.” These lyrics represent what the project is about: exploration-- not just the exploration of themes but all of human exploration. We, as individuals and as a race, began our existence by knowing nothing, or “with our eyes closed”. And so, with this project, Sleeping at Last continues to explore through introspective lyrics and transcendental sounds created by the variety of instruments.
The artwork of Atlas, done by Geoff Benzing, is a crucial part to the project. He has done a painting for each EP and each song in Atlas and provides a visual element to the project. Some of this artwork has been featured in this blog post.
Sleeping at Last is one of my favorite artists. I fell in love with his music right from the beginning, especially the songs in Atlas: Year One. I believe a large part of the reason for this is because I found his voice absolutely magical. That was initially what drew me to Sleeping at Last, but soon I realized my love for the music was based upon three aspects equally: his melodic, emotional voice, his sincere lyrics, and the sounds created by the instrumentals themselves. All of these aspects are interwoven together to produce extraordinarily beautiful effects.
My favorite song of Sleeping at Last, which I haven’t yet discussed for reasons I will mention, is Saturn. While I have always appreciated the beauty and essentiality of instrumentals, I have never been particularly inclined to listen to only instrumentals without lyrics. Usually I cannot concentrate on the music and my mind wanders. My first time hearing the song Saturn, though, I was inexplicably focused the entire time, intently listening to every new instrument that arose and the effect they caused. Then, something that was extremely unexpected to me occurred in the song, and I was entirely taken aback. I will not discuss the details of the song here due to the risk of spoiling the first experience of the song for anyone (even though there is no guarantee the experience will be the same), but O’Neal’s choice to write the song in this way created an effective emphasis on a specific portion of the song. The result was extremely powerful for me, and because of this Saturn became a defining song of Atlas: Year One for me.
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