September 29, 2009 – Chicago underground glam rock veterans Kill Hannah release their sixth full-length album, Wake Up the Sleepers. In a message to their street team and fans (“The Troops”), frontman Mat Devine said of the album and the band’s intention in creating it:
A new band is born every minute. They’re all fighting for the same objective: your attention and your money. Well we don’t want your money and we don’t want your attention. We want your soul…Those corrupt and cold-hearted hedonists that ran our precious music industry into the ground with their foolish decisions and general ignorance of art and what truly matters to the fans…They were sleeping. They’ve always been sleeping. But watch what happens when they see a crew like us stop playing by the rules…This album is YOUR weapon and these songs are YOUR ammunition to play at full volume and Wake Up the Sleepers.
Fast forward two years, September 29, 2011. The album has earned the attention of the CW, CBS and Fox networks (each have used the album’s first single, New York City Speed; most recently as a promotion for the 2011-2012 eighth season of CBS’s CSI:NY), EA and MTV Games (find the single Strobe Lights on the Rock Band Network), and the video for the most recent single from the album, Promise Me, was prominently featured on the websites of NME, Kerrang! and Nylon magazines. Fans have permanently marked themselves with Wake Up the Sleepers tattoos ranging from the album title and cover art to various lyrics from the songs (the most popularly tattooed lyrics having been nicknamed the Kill Hannah prayer “Universe, wrap your arms around me. Make me strong so I can take on anyone”).
All of this has brought me to a moment of reflection. Today, I listened to the album again in its entirety. Two years ago, it was all I played for months following the release. Nearly every time I listen to the album, I find something new to love. It is just that rich and deep. In the two years since the album was released I have looked back on my initial review more than once and wished I could go back and write it again, filling in where I missed things before. This is me taking that chance.
My favorite track, almost instantly and still today, is Why I Have My Grandma’s Sad Eyes. It is the song on the album that has spoken to me the loudest, given me the most to cling to, the most to relate to. It is from this track that fans have adopted the “Kill Hannah prayer” that so many of us have worked into tattoos, permanently imprinting it on our skin. The five minute track is almost completely solid with lyrics, a story of growing up outcast, dealing with the desperation of feeling trapped, clawing and scraping to get out, all the while being told to give it up.
The easy fan favorite has been the track no one thought fit. Promise Me is simply the least marketable, least commercial track on the album. The conscious decision was made to stick this haunting story of a lost love at the end of the album, calling attention to it rather than burying it in the middle, has proven to be one of Kill Hannah’s best decisions yet. Kerrang! magazine has said Promise Me is possibly Kill Hannah’s best track of their career.
When the fans demanded it be made a single, the band called in every favor they were owed and shot a semi-illegal video over a blustery Chicago pre-Spring weekend. The video, which was not supported by the band’s label, received worldwide recognition, promoted by NME, Kerrang! and Nylon magazines, musician and friend of the band Benji Madden, tattoo artist and reality television star Kat von D and several others. As of press time, the video has received nearly 90,000 views on YouTube alone. That number, coupled with the statistics from Vimeo, NME, Kerrang!, Nylon and ArtistsDirect.com (as well as countless fan blogs and webpages with the video embedded), the video has easily topped 100,00 views. Not a bad accomplishment in eight months for an underground video promoted solely by fans of the band.
On the subject of finding something new every time I listen to the album – Laika has never been a favorite of mine, although other fans have claimed it their own. A memorial for the Russian dog sent into space in the late 1950’s with no expectation of her return or survival, Laika was just not a song I connected well with. Then one day, I was listening to it in my headphones and Elias Mallin’s drums came through stronger than they ever had before. Now, even if I am still not in love with the song, I have that drum beat to focus on.
Musically, I still love everything else about the Wake Up the Sleepers album. The “guest stars” – Benji Madden, Amanda Palmer, Chibi, the Chicago Children’s Choir – are all blended into the music, rather than the primary focus, the way they are in so many other areas of the music industry. So often an artist will release an album “featuring” special guests and when you sit down to listen to it, half of the songs are sung almost entirely by the guests, with the main artist singing harmonies and back up vocals. This was not the case with Wake Up the Sleepers. There are even moments – Amanda Palmer on Living in Misery, for example – where the guest vocalist’s parts are only truly noticeable when they are no longer present, the way they are in a live show where Devine takes over. For me, this is what a guest vocalist is supposed to be.
So often we buy albums, listen to them a few times, find three, maybe four tracks out of twelve that we really enjoy and then it becomes background noise or filed away to only be heard when it comes around in the shuffle rotation. Two years after its initial release, I am still in love with Kill Hannah’s Wake Up the Sleepers. Start to finish, every note, every lyric, it still captivates me. Thank you, Kill Hannah, for giving me, and all of your fans, such an amazing gift. I cannot wait for the next one.