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Song Premiere: Sleeping Lessons daydream skyward on synth-driven single ‘Big Stars’

There are many different lessons a listener can take from a band’s music. What matters most is how we let it in.

For Seattle’s Sleeping Lessons, there’s a raw emotion bubbling under the surface, a childlike wonder under the alt-rock band’s sounds, and a sense of grief and understanding in the words and voice of frontman Charlie Deane. The quartet reformed after a six-year absence to deliver debut album Red Sprites, and in the time away Deane suffered perhaps his greatest loss in the death of his infant son, Oskar.

“He was born with a complicated set of congenital heart defects,” Deane told the Capital Hill Times back in January, when his organization, Love, Seattle, released a mixtape to benefit a Northwest hospital. “After undergoing several surgeries at Seattle Children’s Hospital, he passed away… This project began as catharsis, a way for me to manage my grief, and to give back to an organization that had already given me so much. After the first year, I realized how good it felt to make a positive impact on people’s lives. It really felt like we were doing something special as a community.”

In addition to his charity, his own songwriting has provided an outlet to cope.

Sleeping Lessons’ latest single, “Big Stars”, which is out Friday with a cassette release the night before at Barboza in Seattle, exudes the words and wisdom of a songwriter who has experienced a lot. The spacious track juxtaposes the notion of what inspired him to be in a band with the personal setbacks that provided extreme perspective on life. As he sings “Feel alive and make love” over and over, followed by “And you’ll live fast die young/break a few hearts”, the message go out and live life without expectation or hindered resentment is suggested.

“‘Big Stars’ is about how even when things fall apart, and don’t go as you envisioned them, there is still love in this world to be had,” Deane tells Vanyaland. “Sometimes it just doesn’t come packaged the way you imagine it, but you live your life because everything is exactly how it is meant to be. There’s more weight to that currency than there could ever be to any naive perception of fortune and fame.”

Further interpretation is, as always, up to the listener.

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