Stella Sleeps – Anemic City (Album – Icy Cold Records)
Genre/Influences: Dark-Wave.
Format: Digital, CD, Vinyl.
Background/Info: This is the debut album of Swedish project Stella Sleeps. The work features eleven songs including four tracks previously released on the EP “Anemic Dream”.
“Anemic City” came out on Icy Cold Records in 2022 as a CD album, as a vinyl LP and as a download, with Italian distributor Audioglobe handling the CD.
Content: This work stands for typical Cold-Wave music driven by mewing, melancholic guitar. The songs are filled with melancholy while the vocals are sometimes reminding me to Brian Molko (Placebo). You’ll also notice fine, electronic bleeps and other passages with catchy, electro, tones.
+ + + : I like the evasive and melancholic mood of the album with dreamy vocals on top. The dry snares, bass drums and guitar playing are pure 80s like. The song “Caught” is a noticeable cut driven by a cool, dark, chorus.
– – – : There’s only one song going over the 4 minutes so I regret cool songs aren’t a bit more extended.
Conclusion: This work sounds like an honest debut but this band is for sure able to do better.
Best songs: “Caught, “Rain”, “Blood”, “Operator”.
Rate: 7½.
Artist: www.facebook.com/stellasleeps
Label: www.facebook.com/icycoldrecords
About Stella Sleeps
Stella Sleeps is a dark-wave and cold-wave project from Vänersborg in Sweden, signed to the French label Icy Cold Records.
The four-track EP “Anemic Dream” was the first Icy Cold release for the project, issued as a digital EP in 2021. The debut album “Anemic City” followed in 2022 on CD, vinyl LP and download, and carried over four of the EP tracks.
Icy Cold Records continued with the project after this album: the EP “Undisclosed Location” appeared in 2024 on both CD and 12″ vinyl. Beyond the record label listings and the band’s own channels, little biographical detail about the line-up has been published, and Stella Sleeps does not have a Wikipedia entry.
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