Sleep with Hate

During the writing and recording of Sleep With Heat, Carolyn Berk lived in Athens, Georgia, Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Oregon; the entire expanse of the touring musician's American highway. It is this relentlessness, this longing-turned-searching, that is woven into Sleep With Heat's tales of loneliness and heartache. Broke-down, hungover laments from motel parking lots and frozen foreign cities tell of the emotional labor of perpetual goodbyes, and of the simultaneous enchantment of someone who doesn't stick around long enough to ever get too comfortable in a place. It's fresh-eyed. It's sad-hopeful. It's brave and vulnerable. Musically, Sleep With Heat finds the band at its best, at times with expansive guitars and gorgeous strings, at other times stripped down to the honest-bones sound of a banjo-plucked Southern front porch. Berk is accompanied by old friends/gifted musicians: Brent Jones (Phosphorescent), Jesse Flavin (Phosphorescent), and Daniel Rickard (Parker and Lily); with guest vocals elegantly delivered by Matthew Houck (Phosphorescent).