Matt Chabe’s debut as Sleeping Fits feels like the kind of record you stumble across by accident; an unassuming Bandcamp upload that turns out to be a miniature world of fuzz, heat, and human messiness. It’s the product of a one-man operation based outside Guadalajara, Mexico, recorded with what Chabe calls “busted amps and cheap guitars.” That roughness is the album’s signature; not an accident to be fixed but a sound to be inhabited. Sleeping Fits is desert-rock filtered through an art-school lens, a mix of Songs for the Deaf-style swagger and late-era Bowie theatricality that somehow still leaves room for pop hooks.
The record opens with Crystal Lizard (Was Gonna Be the Name of This Band); a perfectly chaotic overture that sets the tone. It’s equal parts joke and manifesto: the title sounds self-effacing, but the song burns with conviction. Layers of grimy guitar fuzz stack over a drum groove that could fall apart at any moment, grounding the album’s aesthetic of collapse-as-beauty. It feels like Chabe’s nod to the DIY ethic; unpolished, raw, but utterly alive. It’s an introduction that tells you what kind of trip you’re in for: you’re not being chauffeured; you’re holding onto the roof rack.
I Feel Fine follows, immediately flipping the mood. The riffs are dirtier, the pacing looser; somewhere between Queens of the Stone Age and early Foo Fighters if both were playing through thrift-store speakers. Chabe’s vocals hover between sneer and sincerity, reflecting the album’s emotional push-and-pull: everything’s falling apart, but at least we can dance about it. This is also where you start to hear his melodic instincts shine. Beneath the grime and distortion are big, sticky choruses that recall mid-2000s alt-radio, but twisted into something stranger and more personal.
After that high point, Soneto de la catástrofe brings things back to the sand and smoke. Its Spanish title which translates to “Sonnet of the Catastrophe” hints at Chabe’s life in Mexico, but the song’s mood feels universal; wearied, poetic, and strange. The riffs feel exhausted but beautiful, like something half-remembered from a fever dream. It’s where the record’s tone shifts from rebellion to reflection.
A personal highlight, If I Wore Any / Leftenant, acts as both a reset and a revelation. It’s the most fully realized song here; musically expansive and lyrically unguarded at a brisk three-minute runtime. The riffs stretch wider, the production breathes, and Chabe’s voice finally feels centered rather than buried under noise. You can hear flashes of Bowie’s Blackstar here; the existential dread wrapped in gorgeous melody, but also echoes of Truckfighters’ stoner-rock density. This track is where the album’s loose themes of disillusionment and endurance crystallize: surviving late-stage capitalism, self-doubt, and the urge to give up; all through sheer stubborn creativity.
Then comes Anti-Fashion, perhaps the record’s most Bowie-adjacent moment. The angular riffs and disjointed rhythm section make it sound like something off Lodger if it had been produced in a desert bunker. It’s sardonic but self-aware; a song that seems to poke fun at trend-chasing musicians while being stylish as hell itself. The chorus lands like a punchline you almost don’t get until it’s too late.
By the time we get to The Kissing Disease introduces a new texture: sleazy post-punk groove melting into an almost poppy refrain. It’s Chabe’s best songwriting moment; the balance between grit and gloss, cynicism and earnestness. It’s got the propulsion of early Arctic Monkeys but filtered through desert dust and a migraine.
The closer, Sylphide, doubles as both finale and thesis statement. It begins soft, almost hesitant, before descending into a full-on desert-rock dirge; hypnotic, scorched, and cathartic. It’s the sound of the record folding in on itself, as if Chabe is taking one last look at everything he’s built before letting it dissolve in static. When the final notes fade, it feels less like closure and more like resignation: the calm after a long creative exorcism.
What makes Sleeping Fits remarkable isn’t technical perfection; it’s the sincerity baked into every imperfection. The in-house mixing might be a bit rough, the vocals occasionally obscured, but it all adds to the authenticity. It’s a record that embraces its flaws because that’s the point: to sound alive, not engineered. It’s music that feels like it was built with bare hands, not assembled by committee.
In the end, Sleeping Fits is an album about friction between the organic and the artificial, beauty and burnout, sincerity and irony. It’s lo-fi glam for a world too tired to glam up anymore. And for a debut recorded in the heat with broken gear, it’s astonishing how vivid and alive it sounds. Chabe might call it “art-rock pop at war with late-stage capitalism,” but for the rest of us, it’s something simpler: proof that imperfect music can still feel perfect.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
