Rogue Wave

ASLEEP AT HEAVEN'S GATE

Brushfire

Earlier this year Rogue Wave ditched venerable indie label Sub Pop and signed with Jack Johnson's Brushfire Records, a move that might have paved the way for a few songs about Hawaiian sunsets and banana pancakes, eaten slowly in bed. Instead, as frontman Zach Rogue recently told an interviewer, he wrote "Asleep at Heaven's Gate," under a shroud of "inertia . . . this feeling of things being anticlimactic, or disappointing." For a band with a growing following, this is an odd statement. It's also unsurprising. Rogue Wave's best music has always been shaped by an underdog sensibility, the fear that even when things are going right, they'll probably end up wrong. On the lush "Heaven's Gate," Rogue slips into resignation, remembering, over the verse of "Chicago x 12," that "we had fun in the sun/ but now you've thrown it away/ tossing out the baby with the bathtub." Later, on the gentle "Christians in Black," he admits, "with feelings out in the open/ every day is just like the next." The fact that these impressions never really coalesce is the point. From the warm opener, "Harmonium," to the last track, "Heaven's Gate" is built out of atmosphere and free associations, like a long, lovely, pop poem.

MATTHEW SHAER

ESSENTIAL: "Christians in Black"