Frequent readers might notice that whenever a screamo as a genre is a bit of an anomaly genre wise. Heavy by punk standards, often heavy enough to be featured here, but not fundamentally metal enough to be always guaranteed a place here. He wave a lot of the classic acts featured here, some of which I have reviewed on the front page, while others I have covered in our non-metal feature. Likewise, screamo is a genre often played in conjunction with other genres like post-rock, post-hardcore, sludge metal, blackgaze, and whatnot, so likewise some screamo lands closer to metal, while others dive further away. Technically we could eventually find ourselves in a place where we redraw the line to completely include all screamo as metal enough for our website, but for now, the line exists. When Dreamwell released their debut full-length, Modern Grotesque, we covered them in the nonmetal feature. Well, what changed?
By Dreamwell's standards, nothing fundamentally, as much as that arbitrary line being slightly redrawn because I had the opportunity to interview guitarist Aki McCullough before the album's release. I was already looking forward to In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You and would've covered it anyway, but I don't want to ignore how much the interview itself tipped the scales towards that imaginary line being redrawn to make place for this review on the main page. Because honestly Dreamwell lie a bit on the softer side, especially with how a lot of their sound's skeleton relies on having really bright clean guitars and how much of a presence vocals that aren't screams have. There's a slight math rock feeling in some of the guitar's twang, but a lot of it is pretty much modern post-rock with more aggressive drumming and vocals. A lot of it.
The heavier moments come bit by bit during the record, but even then there's a very clear post-rock influence to the instrumentals, feeling like they take more from Russian Circles' more metal moments rather than anything properly screamo. Having a lot of its heaviness come not necessarily from the guitars does create a pretty neat contrast between the light and the dark. Vocalist Keziah Staska can really pull their weight when in comes to the most visceral of screams, but the range doesn't call for the extreme of that spectrum as often, including a lot of rather shouted vocals and more emo leaning cleanings. That's the modus operandi for a lot of the record but mostly in the front end. The backend of the record has the very soft and ambiental "Reverberations of a Sickly Wound", the dissonant and noisy "Blighttown Type Beat", the brief and extreme "Body Fountain", and the very slow build of atmospheric heaviness complete with a saxophone that is "I Dream't of a Room of Clouds", and the the closer sort of bringing elements out of all of these before finishing in a vibe similar to the post-rock screamo of the record's frontend. This isn't to say that the back end is necessarily better than the front end, but that a lot of the album's sound diversity takes some time to reach.
With a production and backstory less troubling than Modern Grotesque, In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You finds Dreamwell imbues a lot of emotional impact that comes from the sound's light/dark and soft/heavy contrast, and a lot that comes from the very direct lyricism.
