Review

Some albums bore you until you fall asleep. Others try too hard to get you there (they usually have spacy synths, bland classical guitars, streaming water sounds, and subliminal messages). And then, a few lull you to sleep in the simplest ways. If Thousands wants you to doze off. In fact, the booklet of Lullaby specifies that it should be listened to at "as low a volume as possible to induce and aid in slumber" and the jewel case has a warning sticker: "May cause drowsiness." Using guitars and synthesizers, Aaron Molina and Christian McShane have recorded a continuous hour-long drone piece. It hovers in midair, just slightly out of reach, moving slowly and hypnotically. You can lose yourself in it -- lose track of time and space. At a high volume, the hum of the musicians' amplifiers occasionally threatens to take over the quiet, noise-based soundscapes, but if you follow the instructions it disappears, blending with the background noises of your surroundings. In the first and last thirds of the album, someone steps up to the microphone and speaks softly. The echo effect makes it very difficult to hear (even more if you have decided to listen at a low volume), but in track eight the message, repeated over and over, is clear: "Our lives will never be the same/We miss Matt terribly/We think of him all the time." It gives the pieces a note of sorrow, and all of a sudden what sounded like an exercise in experimental slumber music turns to a new kind of elegy.