Just Don't Stop/Restart - Team Sleep, Nostalgia, and 19th Anniversary Reissues

It was, originally, titled “Natalie Portman.” 

At the time, I was uncertain why. And, two decades plus later, I am still uncertain. The lyrics—there aren’t even that many, really, and they are ambiguous at best. Eerie phrases more or less strung together to hang, and float, in the spaces created by the two or three electric guitars playing. One, cloaked in a dreamy, hypnotic delay, so the sounds of the pick hitting the strings arrive and create a sensation like they are bouncing off one another; the others—a little less dreamy, and a little edgier, playing mournful, complimentary lead melodies over the top of it. 

The lyrics—ambiguous at best. Eerie, evocative, borderline despondent phrases, slowly and gently cooed by Chino Moreno. 

“Live in turn,” he begins, drawing every syllable out. “Alright. I’m not gonna wait for you tonight.”

“Live from the stage, I’m sure,” he continues. “I’m not gonna wait for you anymore.”

There’s no chorus to the song that was, originally, titled “Natalie Portman.” Just four verses, with the final one being where Moreno’s voice soars into the register that those familiar with his work as the dynamic lead singer of the “alternative metal” band the Deftones. “Live from the stage—I’m sure. I’m not gonna look at you anymore….the same way.” 

The song, “Natalie Portman,” is nearly six minutes in length—and it ends, more or less the same way it begins, with long, instrumental stretches, of the bouncing, hypnotic waves of guitar, until, for roughly the last 90 seconds, it gives way to the sounds of the out of doors—crickets, and other insects chirping, and the whooshing of the air, until that fades out slowly.

If you search “Team Sleep Natalie Portman” on YouTube, the first video that comes up was uploaded 15 years ago, and the song is set to a slide show of different, often glamorous photographs of the song’s titular actress. “Natalie Portman,” as I am describing it, and as it is heard in this YouTube clip, and as I first heard it, in either late 2002 or early 2003, was never officially released. 

The song, later re-recorded and somewhat drastically restructured to include a very dramatic, explosive final few minutes, was also retitled, fittingly after one of its lyrics, “Live From The Stage,” when it appeared near the end of the self-titled debut album from Team Sleep, released after an unexpectedly lengthy gestation period, in May of 2005.

And that’s the thing. You see. 

It can happen with anything. Really. Books. Movies. Music. Where there is a lore, or a mythology, that comes along with whatever it might be. And, I guess, depending on what it is we are talking about, and what kind of person you might be, there are situations where the lore, or the mythology, that surrounds something is potentially more compelling than the thing itself. 

And that’s the thing. You see. That I think, at least for me, happened by the time that “Natalie Portman” was re-recorded, restructured, and retitled as “Live From The Stage,” and was tucked away near the end of Team Sleep—an album that, now 19 years after the fact, no matter how genuinely interesting or bizarre or impressive it can still sound, it, for better or worse, is still overshadowed by its own complicated, partially convoluted history.

*

And I suppose that the first time I would have heard the name Team Sleep would date back to the summer, or at least the fall, of 2000, following the release of the Deftones’ seminal third album, The White Pony, which, as they began the slow push away from the aggressive, nu-metal sound of their second full-length, 1997’s Around The Fur, featured a number of uncharacteristic qualities, and it, as an album, also kind of has to stand in the shadow of its own lore, just in terms of the well-documented, ongoing tensions within the band, the lengthy, often difficult recording process, the fact that the group’s lyricist and vocalist, Chino Moreno, was quoted as saying that he wanted the record to sound like My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, a suggestion which the band’s longtime producer, Terry Date, scoffed at the notion of trying to replicate. 

Another uncharacteristic element to The White Pony was its centerpiece—“Teenager.” Slow, glitchy, moving like a dream from which you don’t wish to wake up from, the song featured input from John Molina—DJ Crook, who was friends, and at one time roommates, with the Deftones’ recently acquired DJ and keyboard player, Frank Delgado. 

The song itself, just in terms of its delicate nature, was unlike anything else the Deftones had produced at that point—which makes sense. Originally, it was never intended to be a Deftones song. It was written with the intention to be included among the material Moreno, and his longtime friend, guitarist Todd Wilkison, had been slowly compiling under the name Team Sleep.

The first time I would have heard the name Team Sleep would date back to the summer, or at least the fall, of 2000, and it would have been in a short, track-by-track breakdown of The White Pony as part of a cover story on the Deftones, and the record, from an issue of “Alternative Press,” where Moreno mentions this side-project. 

Early on, either Moreno himself, or when the project was mentioned in music press, or on the internet, it was referred to as his “trip-hop side project.” But, the truth is that, well, yes, “Teenager” has an element of trip-hop to it. Certainly. However, the recordings of Team Sleep that began trickling out, both officially and not, are not really trip-hop at all. Arguably, at times, a little more experimental or daring than what you might expect from the Deftones, at least on their first few records, but it, much like Moreno’s other forays into side-projects later in his career, like Crosses or Palms—stopping just a little short of the sound, or the aesthetic, that the project in question wished or longed to be attributed to.

Team Sleep, at least since 2015, has been long dormant or inactive—and I am not really sure why, but in tandem with its 19th anniversary, the project’s only commercially released album has been reissued for the first time on vinyl—first, in a limited edition, gold vinyl pressing as part of Record Store Day, in April; and now, a few months later, a wider release pressed onto standard black vinyl.

And I say “commercially released album” because that is a big part of the lore, or mythology, surrounding Team Sleep, itself, as a band or a project, and the album that was ultimately released 19 years ago, and where this does become a little complicated, or convoluted to try and retrace. 

*

And for as many details about different parts of my life that I can remember quite clearly—most of which are of little, if any, help or consequence, I do not entirely recall when I first learned about the ultimately scrapped Team Sleep album that had, early in the recording process, been leaked onto the internet—unfortunately, or ironically, however, you want to look at it, originally turning up on a Deftones message board if I recall this story correctly.

More than a collection of demos, but something less than a, like, complete album, the 13 songs that I downloaded off of a crass, post-Napster file sharing service in, like, either late 2002 or early 2003 during my sophomore year of college, onto the bulky desktop computer of the girl that I was romantically involved with at the time, is now referred to as Unmastered Advance. And I think the general consensus, at least in 2005, when Team Sleep emerged with their self-titled album, was that what they had put together originally, and what had wound up on the Internet, was better, or at least more genuinely interesting, than the songs that found their way onto the CD that I bought from the Best Buy in Dubuque, Iowa, mere days before I was set to graduate from college. 

It isn’t a matter of time being kind or unkind to Team Sleep over the last 19 years. 

I mean, it is a product of its time from beginning to end, in a number of ways. However. It is more of a matter of the album being unable to step out of the shadow of something that wasn’t like, never intended to be heard, but from what I could glean at the time, and what I can piece together now, that something wasn’t quite finished yet, but was embraced, almost immediately, by an audience that was, only a handful of years later, somewhat unwilling or uninterested in giving a more polished, and pretty drastically re-worked version the same reception.

*

Because the internet is not the same place it used to be, it is both easy and not to listen to the songs that were included on the Unmastered Advance Team Sleep record—the material is very easy to access on YouTube, complete with fan-made album art; the songs themselves, though, in, like a zip file, that you can download and listen to at your leisure, is seemingly a thing of the past.

Team Sleep, across its 15 songs, is not just a track-by-track re-recording of the material that has already found an audience. It is, almost, an entirely new album, recorded by, almost, an entirely different configuration of the group, with very little overlap between what listeners had become so familiar with, and what they were going to ultimately receive in the end. 

Only five of Team Sleep’s 15 tracks, a small handful of which are short, moody, instrumental interludes between songs, appeared in one form or another on the Unmastered Advance—“Natalie Portman,” for example, once the closing track, was now “Live From The Stage,” and sequenced two tracks ahead of the more more hopeful, and restrained closing track, “11/11.” The song now, rather than ending with the sound of crickets and air swooshing in the distance, spent its final three minutes and change in unhinged ferocity—huge distorted guitar chords raining down torrential, and drumming that pummels and intensely that it leaves bruises. 

And then there is the creepy, trudging, story song “Tomb of Ligeia,” with guest vocals from Helium’s Mary Timony, which was, at one time, simply called “Ligeia”—and in this final form, didn’t seem all that different. And if there had been changes, or updates made to the song, at least here, they were subtle and minimal.

Team Sleep, in its original incarnation, was more or less a trio, and outside of Timony’s contribution, another guest vocalist on the earliest recordings of the group was Faith No More’s Mike Patton, who was featured on equally as creeping and equally as trudging “Kool Aide,” which, 19 years ago, did not make the cut for the album—though it is, now, one of two bonus tracks included on the vinyl pressing’s fourth side, and I am pretty confident that, at least in some track listings for the Unmastered Advance, was referred to as “Kool-Aid Party.”

Team Sleep, after undergoing whatever changes it needed to as a project between, say, 2003 and 2004, became a five-piece for all practical purposes, rounded out with additional vocalist Rob Crow of the downcast indie rock group Pinback, and the powerhouse drumming of Zach Hill, then known as part of the group Hella, and later part of the confrontational, abrasive duo Death Grips. Crow and Moreno, though, are rarely in the same place—two songs, total, with Crow taking lead vocal duties on three songs: “Princeton Review,” “Our Ride to The Rectory,” and “Elizabeth.”

The newly written songs, and additional vocal contributions from Crow, along with songs pulled from recording sessions with, outside of the band self-producing, Greg Wells and nu-metal auteur Ross Robinson, and Terry Date, it is an album that, I think, wishes to be cohesive—as much as I can, but throughout the 15 songs included, more than anything, it has the feeling of “too many cooks,” or at the very least, something that, at one time, started out small, was originally intended to always remain small, but became just too big, or cumbersome, for itself, and everything weighing it down did take a toll on how successfully the album, as a whole, was executed.

* 

And I was going to say, before I stopped myself, that Team Sleep, both in its earliest iteration with the ultimately scrapped album’s worth of material, and with the self-titled full-length from 2005, would have been the first time that I was listening to a “new” project or band, fronted by someone so synonymous with something else, and try as best as I was able not to draw too many comparisons between the two.

But, I realized that was not the case. Not really. There have been myriad examples of this throughout my life—dating back to when I was in high school, and if I hadn’t already played my hand by confessing my appreciation of the Deftones when I was much, much younger, my interest in “hard rock” in the late 1990s and early 2000s is apparent when I say that the first example of this that I can truly remember is when Tool’s vocalist Maynard Keenan co-founded the group A Perfect Circle alongside guitarist Billy Howerdell—Keenan’s voice, unmistakable, though the music of A Perfect Circle, at least on their 2000 debut, Mer de Noms, was much more accessible and less masturbatory in comparison. 

But I am thinking, most recently, of the noticeable differences between Beth Gibbons’ iconic work as the vocalist for the group Portishead, and her newly issued debut as a solo artist, Lives Outgrown, which found her very intentionally retreating from singing over downcast, jazz and hip-hop influenced breakbeats.

I am thinking of the differences between Radiohead, and any of the other handful of projects that Thom Yorke as aligned himself with—is solo output, certainly, as well as his two albums fronting The Smile, or his seemingly one-off record with the unlikely collection of collaborators in Atoms For Peace.

How were Chino Moreno’s efforts in Team Sleep, at least in 2001, when the group was working in a Seattle recording studio, putting together material that would make its way onto the internet before it was truly ready, different or distinguishable from his work in the Deftones?

And how were Moreno’s efforts in Team Sleep, in 2005, after the group had expanded and re-collected itself, tinkering with a handful of old songs while attempting to concoct new ones as a means of, presumably, surprising the fans they had gathered over two years’ time, different or distinguishable from his work in the Deftones?

The answer, anecdotally I guess, is one of those was much more distinguishable than the other wound up being.

I am remiss, slightly, to say that a bulk of Team Sleep, especially the newer songs, written in the time after the Unmastered Advance leak, are like Deftones-lite, or, like, “We have Deftones at home,” but there are moments where Moreno’s voice, unmistakable in its range and timbre, floats and sharply ascends over jagged, snarling guitars, and thundering percussion—the difference, I guess, is that even at its most aggressive or ferocious moments, Team Sleep, overall, is far less aggressive, or ferocious, or just inherently loud, than the Deftones were at this time, and, I mean, probably still are to some extent.  

Which isn’t a bad thing. It’s not a good thing either. It is just the reality of the album, and the project—the project, where it ended up, really. And the difficulties of being someone synonymous with one specific thing and then attempting to try something else. 

*

And we have, I think, reached the point in this where, and if I may break the fourth wall with you, it would behoove me to begin writing about the thing that this piece, in the end, will ultimately be about. And, in reaching that point, based on the rhythm with which I have found myself writing about music, within the last few years, it would be here, inching close to 3,000 words, where I would begin dissecting and analyzing specific songs—discussing the instrumentation, and using a lot of adjectives, like “robust,” or “shimmery,” and then unpacking, as I am able to, the lyrics.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that, Moreno, as a lyricist, pens songs that aren’t about anything. I think the songwriting process for Moreno, within the context of his work in the Deftones, involves the band writing, and then playing, the music first, or at least assembling a melody for him to work within, before the words, and then his vocals, are, like, one of the last things. A number of the songs from the Deftones are certainly about something—sometimes they are dangerous, fictionalized narratives; other times, they are loose ideas based around a central concept, or feeling. 

They are nearly always incredibly ambiguous, though. Giving the songs, at times, both a dreamlike sensation, as well as an unsettling undercurrent. 

But ambiguous lyrics are hard to analyze. 

And what I realized, in thinking about the writing on Team Sleep is that it is not a very lyrics forward album. Moreno’s vocal contributions, as well as the tender foil he finds in the songs where Rob Crow sings lead, as well as the haunting guest turn from Mary Timony—these are all more or less another element to the song, as a whole, contributing to the overall feeling the band wants to create. 

And, I mean, 19 years after the fact, I do not mean to sell Team Sleep short, but it is an album that kind of operates with two moods—more reserved, or melodic moments, and then songs that are exponentially much more aggressive, or chaotic in how they arrive. 

And one style, or aesthetic, is not done more successfully than the other. But the continual juxtaposition between the two extremes, across the album’s nearly hour long running time, kind of finds itself at times really grasping and not always connecting with a sense of cohesion.

But maybe that was the point—not all along. Not in the beginning, certainly. But once the group reconfigured itself, it was perhaps done with a sense of disorientation in mind. 

*

Even with the weight of the album’s and band’s mythology behind it, and the seemingly chaotic approach to the songs that did wind up on Team Sleep, what I was probably too young to appreciate at the time, but have a better understanding of now, nearly two decades later, is how within the extremes these songs tread between, it is relatively well paced in terms of not leaning too heavily into things that are louder, or more aggressive, or, in turn, things that are more reserved or on the quieter side. 

And what I was probably too young to appreciate at the time, but have a better understanding of now, nearly two decades later, is how the album is bookended with in the perpetual give and take—I am remiss to say that there is anything on Team Sleep that is “hopeful” or “optimistic,” because it is just not that kind of album and they were not that kind of band. These songs are, certainly, about something, but not that kind of something. However. It opens with a huge, triumphant, exciting swing, that does imply the stakes, and the heights, of the album are going to be high—not entirely indicative of what is to come, but it is a smart way to grab the attention of the listener before pulling them into material they are both potentially familiar with, and not.

At the other end, after the torrents and shouts and glitchy turns inward, Team Sleep closes with what is probably its most melodic, both in terms of the arranging, and in the vocal delivery from both Moreno and Crow—one of the two songs where they are both featured, and in this case, really complimenting one another’s range. 

Beginning with what sounds like a muffled, disembodied vocal sample, bent and warped until it glides into a jittery, writhing rhythm that rumbles and pulsates, driving the song, “Ataraxia,” Team Sleep’s opening track, is unrelenting in the heights that it continues to strive for—continuing to lift itself upward through both the airy, swooning vocals from Moreno—his voice, drifting just above the surface of everything undulating around him, and the song’s impressive, honestly triumphant sounding guitar riff that continues to appear throughout, and is later expanded upon, in a kind of bittersweet or gently melancholic way, on the keyboard, in an instrumental break between the first chorus, and the second verse, which does find the song becoming a little more volatile in terms of the levels of both the rhythm guitar’s distorted strums, and the strain and reach in Moreno’s howls.

And I am remiss to say that Moreno’s lyrics aren’t about anything, or that the songs forego, specifically here, on this record, forego a kind of obvious thoughtfulness in favor of leaning more into the overall feeling of the song. And, I mean, in some cases, that might be true. Though here, in this opening track it is not the case, though they are delivered in such a way—a little cavernous in how they reverberate, and a little dreamy in how they weave themselves in and out of the perpetual rippling of the music. The song’s title, alone, is defined as a “state of serene calmness,” which is, I suppose, what the fragmented and partially obscured lyrics are conveying.

“Froze asleep,” Moreno sings in a soothing, rich register. “Coma deep. I dream I’m out with you—alone at sea.”

And as exemplified by the explosive nature of the song’s refrain, musically, and the rise in Moreno’s voice to the anguished bellowing, people familiar with his work in the Deftones are accustomed to hearing him use, the tone of the song’s imagery becomes less serene, and calm, though Moreno himself, as the narrator, or protagonist in the depiction, does not seem to mind, and potentially welcomes it. “And you watched the wave—then you sang to me as we sank. Dream I had with you.”

“Ataraxia” is not the shortest song on Team Sleep, but it is on the one that moves the quickest simply because there is little if any relenting in the propulsive nature to it. And just as it began, it winds itself down to a logical, fitting conclusion, not sticking around any longer than it feels like it needs to, before the aesthetic of the album briefly turns inward, on “Ever (Foreign Flag.)”

“Ever” was, at one time, called “Cambodia,” and it does date back to the band’s earlier material from the Unmastered Advance—and while some of the songs that did make the transition from one collection to the self titled album were re-recorded and restructured to be a little a little more boisterous, or unhinged, “Ever” is not the same, per se, but the changes are relatively subtle.

And if “Ataraxia” was a smart choice in terms of an enthusiastic, attention-grabbing welcome into the world, albeit an uneven one, of the album, “Ever” was both a smart choice to place second, and to release ahead of the album’s arrival, as the single—because even in its re-recorded, slightly altered state, it still rings of the familiarity of “Cambodia,” and even with as slow of a crawl as it moves along with, there is something alluring, or seductive, and infectious, about how it unfolds in all of less than three minutes.

“Ever,” in its arranging, sets its tone rather quickly, and then hinges the rest of the song on that tone, or mood. It does so in part with the main guitar riff (a very recognizable holdover from its appearance on the Unmastered album) that plays almost entirely through, and the jittery, steady programmed beats that give the song its slow, steady rhythm—but it is the way the band creates this small, emotional dip when the song arrives at the chorus, that exemplifies the kind of contrast between the dreamy and the melancholic that this song really hits, and others sure try to. Something about just the slightest of swoons, and all the elements tumbling into one another, briefly, creates something really lasting and surprisingly, given the nature of this album, rather beautiful.

Lust, or longing, are not exactly new emotions, or states of being, that have found their way into the lyrical content of Chino Moreno—but they are not commonplace. “Ever,” even with its ambiguous, fragmented phrasing, slinks along with a cool sense of longing that is both disorienting and rather outward in its sensuality.

“You make that dance look so new,” he begins, his voice in a place of both yearning and restraint in terms of the range he’s in. “And I’m awed—a face like you’ve never seen. I’m your, tonight,” he implores. “So come on.”

And it is within the aforementioned swoon that occurs during the chorus, where Moreno comes in, right in time, as things swell to a peak around him. “So light up the stage,” he commands. “So we can all take off anywhere. We’ll never come back,” he continues, his voice stretching the syllables so they soar, slowly, over the music. “Ever.”

*

Given the shifting nature of the album—not exactly restless, but perhaps just a little uncertain of itself, I think it perhaps goes without saying that a lot of the songs that are amongst the loudest, or the most raucous, are the ones that the most invigorating, even still 19 years later; and the songs that are more reserved, or relaxed, are the songs that are a little more genuinely interesting to the ears—I mean, even if they don’t exactly land where I think Team Sleep perhaps intended, you can hear the attempts being made to try something, or do something, just a little different.

And given that Team Sleep, originally, was referred to as Moreno’s “trip-hop” side project, even though the album that eventually materialized in 2005 is not exactly “trip-hop” at all (arguably neither was the album that was recorded and scrapped) but it is also, ultimately, hard to pin down what genre this would fall into. Not hard enough to be metal; but too hard to be “alternative”; and just too many other influences and aesthetics floating in and out of each song.

Even in the difficult-to-pin-down sound that the band is going for—a collision, I suppose, of Moreno’s interests in both harder-edged, guitar-driven music, and things that are much more delicate and dreamy, and even in what is the inherent lack of what I would consider to be a trip-hop sound, there are a number of places, all of which are in the quieter, or more reserved moments, where the songs are rather groove-oriented, or you find yourself nodding your head in time with the rhythm. 

That happens, certainly, with the slow motion “Ever,” but it also happens certainly with the glitchy, “Princeton Review,” which is also the first appearance of Rob Crow on lead vocals. 

A lot of the songs—across both spectrums of intensity, or lack thereof, are built, at least in part, around the compelling interplay between beats and drum programming from John Molina, and the frenetic, breakneck drumming of Zach Hill, and “Princeton Review” is one of the songs where the collision, or convergence, or the two sounds is predictable, based on how the song reveals itself to be structured. But even in the expectation of where the live drums will come rolling in, it still creates a jolt within the song and a moment of excitement.

“Princeton Review” is among the laid-back or relaxed-sounding songs, at least until the slightly ominous epilogue—along with the jittery, swaying programmed beat, there are layers of shimmering, slow-motion guitars, giving portions of it the dream-like quality that appears throughout the material on Team Sleep. It’s only when Hill’s drumming comes in, the the pacing of the song picks up, and the guitar work becomes a little less dreamy,  and slightly more menacing.

Crow receives writing credits on the songs to which he contributes vocals, and “Princeton Review,” even in the groove it finds itself in, and the glistening tone that it coasts along with almost the entire time, the lyrics, and his soft, almost soothing delivery of them, are certainly more about contributing to the overall feeling of the song—ambiguous, or vague, doesn’t really do justice to how abstract his writing is, giving few, if any, clues to what the song might be about. 

Or maybe it’s just not about anything.

“Unfamiliar, unremorseful—that’s the way you were. Don’t want to bring it up again,” he sings in the chorus. “That’s the way you were.”

“You raise questions of me,” he adds in the short bridge before the chorus returns. “You haunt sections of town.”

Crows lyrics are just as bizarre in the second half of the album, on the acoustic guitar led, briskly paced “Elizabeth,” where, again, the give and take between Molina’s programming and Hill’s drumming proves to be one of the song’s more compelling elements. 

It seems natural that given Moreno’s day job with the Deftones and the otherworldly caterwauling he is capable of as a vocalist, he would primarily appear on the heavier-sounding songs on Team Sleep—and he does, for the most part. But. As the album progresses, he is given the chance to use that howl on something that is a little less aggressive, and one of the songs that is inherently less focused on a skittering groove.

Placed well within the second half of the album, “Ever Since WWI” sounds, certainly, more downcast in terms of its guitar chord progression, than any of the other songs on the album—teetering a little bit into a “Deftones-lite” kind of aesthetic before it lifts slightly, in the chorus, with the inclusion of a quietly strummed acoustic guitar within the mix of the dropped tuned, mournful electric, and the frenetic double bass drum thuds coming from Zach Hill’s work behind the kit, coming together with a slow motion sense of grandeur when Moreno lets his voice rise, and ascend to towering heights.

*

And, there is, of course, a strange feeling that comes from the handful of songs that made the leap from the Unmastered Advance, and wound up within the sequencing on Team Sleep. The feeling of a little bit of familiarity, or like the shadows of something that you know, and potentially know well, but just different. And I think the struggle that I had, certainly, which I am old enough now to really understand, more so than I was at all of 21, and perhaps the struggle other listeners had at the time Team Sleep was released, is that, whether you really wish to or not, as a listener, you may find preference in what you heard first—perhaps never really opening yourself up to something similar, but different.

Outside of “Cambodia” shifting into something a little more robust, and structured, in the form of “Ever,” “Blvd. Nights,” placed early on in Team Sleep’s track list, is another song that was re-recorded. And, I was going to say that it is not drastically reimagined in this form, but then I realized the original recording from Unmastered Advance is one of the album’s many instrumentals—here, it’s been given lyrics, with Moreno singing through muffled distortion, shouting over the top of the chugging, aggressive electric guitars and the pinging of the snare drum.

Musically, “Blvd. Nights,” in this form, is just a lot louder or harder and certainly more chaotic in how explosive it becomes—with big moments of build-up where the bass drum thuds and what is more or less a very heavy metal adjacent riff plays. And this amplification within the song is not necessarily a bad thing, but it, I guess, given the familiarity with the original tension of the instrumental recording, is not exactly a welcome thing either. It, like the other heavier or more aggressive sounding tracks on the album, and like the carryovers from the scrapped records from four years prior, is certainly one of the more exciting moments on the record—as you are unable to avoid the urge to nod your head to the beats found throughout, within the short running time of “Blvd. Nights,” regardless of the fact that it has been 19 years since I heard this version of the song, I still feel compelled to bang my head, or throw myself into the ferocity of the snarling guitars and the bone-shattering drumming that is just unrelenting.

And it should not be a surprise that the lyrics that have been added to “Blvd. Nights,” and maybe they were intended to be added all along, prior to the leak of the earliest iteration of the song, are fragmented, vague, and unnerving. 

Moreno, twice on White Pony, and certainly once on Around The Fur, has written lyrics about going somewhere, but there is a real uncertainty with the “where” one is being taken. Sometimes it is an act of compassion in the face of desperation, like in “Be Quiet and Drive,” but in both “Passenger,” and “Feiticeira,” there is something alluring and mysterious and dangerous happening—like you are going somewhere, potentially against your will, but you are also maybe okay with what is happening. And in his writing on “Blvd. Nights,” he oscillates from a similar thematic place—there’s enough there to paint a picture, but there is also so much ambiguity that the shadows it leaves you in are long and dark.

“You and I complete,” Moreno begins. “She can take me apart. Off through the earth, then back in the car,” he continues. “‘Cause once you begin, you’re not gonna stop.”

“I know how you are,” he howls, accusingly in the bombast of the chorus. “On its own, then you’re not gonna stop…I know how you are.”

Similarly abstract in its writing, though much different in tone, is another one of the re-recorded and updated songs, “King Diamond,” which, in this incarnation, features additional vocals contributed by Mary Timony, and musically, it is certainly among the weirder, or more daring and experimental, and much less straightforward included here.

Primarily based around a bouncing, sharp programmed beat, and myriad samples and other noises fluttering through, there are times when “King Diamond” sounds like music from a video game—though one that you are inherently uncomfortable or on edge while playing. Because the noises, or sounds that ripple throughout are “cool” sounding, sure, but they walk a line between being kind of silly, or a little whimsical, but that is offset by the sense of dread in Timony’s vocal delivery, and the way her voice weaves and overlaps with Moreno’s muffled caterwauling. 

The abstract nature of the lyrics from the song’s first verse is obscured, at least in part, by the hypnotic nature of song’s elements all swirling together, but the strangeness, or uncomfortable feelings come in the chorus, where there is again interplay between Moreno and Timony, but this time it is working less in tandem, and there is more antagonism between the two.

“Start! Look down and sick on the floor! Restart!,” Moreno barks, while Timony, quietly, with a smirk in her voice, asks, “So, what are you talking about?” 

Moreno responds by saying, “Nothing important. Just don’t stop,” before she retorts, “Yeah. You won’t remember me anyway.”

*

It was, originally, titled “Natalie Portman.” 

At the time, I was uncertain why. And, two decades plus later, I am still uncertain. The lyrics—there aren’t even that many, really, and they are ambiguous at best. Eerie phrases more or less strung together to hang, and float, in the spaces created by the two or three electric guitars playing. One, cloaked in a dreamy, hypnotic delay, so the sounds of the pick hitting the strings arrive and create a sensation like they are bouncing off one another; the others—a little less dreamy, and a little edgier, playing mournful, complimentary lead melodies over the top of it. 

The lyrics—ambiguous at best. Eerie, evocative, borderline despondent phrases, slowly and gently cooed by Chino Moreno. 

“Live in turn,” he begins, drawing every syllable out. “Alright. I’m not gonna wait for you tonight.”

“Live from the stage, I’m sure,” he continues. “I’m not gonna wait for you anymore.”

There’s no chorus to the song that was, originally, titled “Natalie Portman.” Just four verses, with the final one being where Moreno’s voice soars into that familiar register. “Live from the stage—I’m sure. I’m not gonna look at you anymore….the same way.” 

The song, “Natalie Portman,” is nearly six minutes in length—and it ends, more or less the same way it begins, with long, instrumental stretches, of the bouncing, hypnotic waves of guitar, until, for roughly the last 90 seconds, it gives way to the sounds of the out of doors—crickets, and other insects chirping, and the whooshing of the air, until that fades out slowly.

The song “Natalie Portman,” which you can still find on YouTube, that I first heard in late 2002 or early 2003, was never officially released. The song, in 2005, would appear re-recorded, and, per the very dramatic, explosive final few minutes, was dramatically reimagined; it was also re-titled, in the end. Fittingly after one of its lyrics. “Live From The Stage.” And it’s tucked away near the conclusion of Team Sleep.

In its earlier form, under a different title, remaining a holding pattern of dreamy tension, the song is certainly about finding, and maintaining, a specific feeling, or aesthetic. It’s not unsettling, or at least not in comparison to a number of other moments on the Unmastered Advance collection, but it is alluring. Or seductive. It slowly brings you further into its depths, but then it ultimately leaves you there. Not to drown. But just to sit. 

“Live From The Stage,” though, is not concerned with the idea of a slow burn, or of the sustained kind of allure. It does, at first, sound very similar to its predecessor—more effects on Moreno’s vocals, the guitar tones just a little different sounding, but it, at least the kind of cavernous drifting and interplay between the guitars comes to an end, and the song does quite literally detonate, like a bomb with the wrong wire snipped during an ill-fated attempt at diffusing. 

Zach Hill’s shattering drumming hits the hardest on “Live From The Stage,” and it often sounds like the drum kit is at risk of falling apart the longer, and more intensely he pounds on it, even in the song’s final moments, and the once glacially paced notes on the guitar that echoed off of themselves through the heavy use of a delay effect become enormous, torrential chords, pouring down hard and heavy, as Moreno’s vocals more or less are drowned out completely within the cacophony of the mix.  

In its earliest iteration, as “Natalie Portman,” it was the moody closing track to the Unmastered album—but here, it is not even really the penultimate moment. Not technically. “Live From The Stage” is placed at track 13 of Team Sleep’s 15, and between it, and the gentle, glistening “11/11,” there is one more brief instrumental interlude. “Live From The Stage,” though, really is like a visceral, final exhalation out before a more hushed, soothing breath in.

“11/11” is one of the two songs featured where both Moreno, and Rob Crow, appear together. And, in the first track where they are both included, it rarely feels like they are working, or rather, singing, I guess, together, but here, past the halfway point, when Moreno arrives, his voice clear and melodic, there is this fascinating, swirling give and take that occurs where the two overlap their lyrics. “11/11,” as it begins, and as it slowly works its way toward this moment, is not exactly mournful, or downcast, but there is a kind of slower, or melancholic sound to the way it shimmers, with the guitar work leaning more into an “indie rock” sound, akin, though a little more muscular in sound, to Crow’s work in Pinback.

I hesitate to say that Team Sleep is an album without hope, but it is not exactly hopeful in sound in a number of places. There is arguably something triumphant sounding about the way the instrumentation and the vocal melody, as well as the kind of unrelenting nature of it all, crumbles together in the opening track, and “11/11” is not, like, an inverse of that, but in place of “triumph,” there is something honestly hopeful that happens when Crow and Moreno begin blending their voices together and the instrumentation picks up a little, becoming just slightly less downcast, glimmering brightly before the song finds its way to the end. 

*

And I do not think I am in a position to say what an artist, or group, should or should not do. I hope that, over time, if anything, I have become less of that kind of music analyst, or writer, or a “critic.” We do, often, as the audience, ask so much of the artists and groups we listen to, and admire—they give, and give, and we take, and we take, and it seems unreasonable to ask more of them.

I do not think I am in a position to say what an artist, or group, should not do. Long dormant, I was both surprised and delighted when it was announced that Team Sleep was being reissued on vinyl as part of Record Store Day. Sequenced across three sides of a double LP, the fourth side includes two additional tracks—“Kool Aide,” which features the gloomy, theatrical vocals of Mike Patton, and another Mary Timony feature, “Let’s Go.” 

And I tell you all of that to tell you this—in thinking about my past relationship with Team Sleep, when I was in my early 20s, in college, and the lore, and mythology that surrounds the album, there is a small part of me that does wish whoever was overseeing the reissue of the album would have included some of the scrapped Unmastered Advance songs on the album’s fourth side, like the brief, haunting opening track, “Death by Plane,” or example, or the sparse, shoegaze adjacent, cavernous “Iceache.” 

These bonus tracks, though, do provide listeners who either maybe were not familiar with the the original, long gestating history of Team Sleep, or, over the last 19 years, perhaps forgot, a small window into just how weird, and potentially experimental the project could have been, or perhaps intended to be early on.

“Kool-Aide” is still just as unsettling and spooky as I remembered it being—kind of campy, almost, listening to it now, though, with Patton’s deep, low voice resonating and creaking like it is coming from the crypt. It was never one of the songs from the Unmastered Advance that I gravitated towards, or particularly enjoyed, but it is genuinely interesting to hear it resurrected, in a sense, in this context as part of the reissue’s supplemental material.

More than anything, “Let’s Go,” in both its instrumentation and the way Timony delivers her vocals here, is the most “trip-hop” sound that the group has achieved, so it is a pleasant surprise and welcomed inclusion here at the top of the reissue’s fourth side. Apparently dating back to the time the band spent in the studio in 2001, the separated tracks and Pro Tools session were lost, and Timony apparently (per a recent Instagram post about the reissue and this song specifically) delivered her vocals over an unmastered mp3, which meant that the song could not be properly mixed, which was why it was ultimately excluded from the self-titled album when it was released in 2005. 

The beat itself, bouncy and chintzy and warbled, is restrained, while mournful-sounding keyboard and guitar progressions trickle down slowly on top of it, with Timony allowing her voice to get caught up in the head bobbing vibe that’s created, delivering her vocals in a lower range—not quite speak/singing, but there is a relaxed nature to it that does make it an artifact that, new to me through this collection, is compelling and mesmerizing in a calming, but subtly unsettling way.

Revisiting Team Sleep, and Team Sleep, in 2024, 19 years—maybe more, honestly, after I was initially invested and interested in the band itself, and “hard rock” as a genre, has been an opportunity to think about different versions of myself. There is, of course, the version of me—19 years old, a sophomore in college, who was still an avid fan and listener of the Deftones, and was more or less obsessed with the Unmastered Advance material, burning it to a CD-R and walking around the campus of the small liberal arts college that I went to, listening to it on my Discman. 

There is the version of me—21, on the cusp of graduating from college, looking toward an uncertain future, moving further away from certain bands and styles or genres of music, with the smallest part of me that was still just a little interested. Interested enough to buy Team Sleep on the day of release—a Tuesday afternoon in May of 2005, at the Best Buy, in Dubuque, Iowa, and ultimately feel a little disappointed with the album once I put it my enormous stereo in my dorm room.

And there is the version of me, now, nearly 41, that, upon learning that Team Sleep was being reissued on vinyl as part of Record Store Day, did not even really bat an eyelash at the idea of standing in line, on a cold April morning, waiting to get into Agharta Records in St. Paul, Minnesota, and weaving my way through the melee of people, to somewhat aggressively place my hands on it as it appeared in the bin of special edition LPs I was tearing through. 

There is the version of me that did that, and then I wonder how often it will be a record I return to. 

And, yes, the Unmastered Advance album is very easily accessible on YouTube, and I’m actually confident that if I exhumed the laptop that I used from the years 2012 to 2019, I would find the mp3s for that album in the iTunes library on the hard drive. But there is the version of me that, in the past, set the version of me from today up for success by placing a neatly labeled CD-R of those songs in the jewel case to my 19-year-old compact disc copy of Team Sleep. 

And there are songs from that album’s recording sessions that, I think, could have been carried over and found a home on what became the self-titled album, or could have been dusted off and remastered to be included as additional material on this vinyl reissue—the glitchy, creeping, and snarling “Mercedes,” would not have sounded out of place at all, with the juxtaposition of a hard, programmed beat and a heavier, dropped tuned guitar riff, or the sweeping, hazy, and surprisingly delicate and mediative “Acoustic One.”

There is a quote from There’s Always This Year, by Hanif Adburraqib that I have been thinking about a lot—“Nostalgia is a relentless hustler.” There’s more to it, obviously, about how badly someone wishes to retrieve a feeling, or as he puts it, the “idea of a feeling,” but as someone who is often nostalgic, or wistful for a different time, I understand the dangers it presents, as a feeling, or state to find yourself.

Something that I have realized about contemporary pop music, the older I get, and the more I think critically about it, and write about it, is this—there are artists, or albums, that found us at a certain age, or during a specific time, and if we are lucky, we can take those with us as we grow; in turn, there are things—an album or artist that we outgrew, for whatever reason, or that did not grow alongside us. You can revisit it, sure, but it is not something that you are able to take with you, carrying it to where you are now. You have to leave it where it is, and, like, you can respect it for what it meant at that time. But that is, despite whatever efforts you may wish to put in, truly where it remains.

Team Sleep and Team Sleep are, of course, for me, and maybe for you, representative of a specific time, or an era. And for some, maybe they are a band, or this is a record, that you were able to take with you, or you have returned to often over the last 19 years. 

It is, for me, an act of nostalgia to revisit it today, and listen through 2024 critical ears, and be able to better articulate what I might have been feeling when I was so much younger, but did not have the analytical vocabulary to articulate. In cases found on both Team Sleep, and with the unreleased original recordings, there are moments that I do think about, and have thought about, sometimes often, but thinking about a song, or an artist, is one thing, and revisiting or actively listening, still, and feeling a connection, is another.

And here’s the thing. It can happen with anything, really. Books. Movies. Music. Where there is a lore and a mythology that comes along with whatever might be. And, depending on what it is we are talking about, and what kind of person you might be, there are situations where the lore, or the mythology, that surrounds something is potentially more compelling than the thing itself.

The reissue of Team Sleep, both as a limited edition pressing, as well as the wider release that it is being given, is, I suppose, a better conclusion for the project that has more or less been abandoned—I would be very surprised if the group ever reformed, in any capacity or configuration, to release new music, given what I presume to be both a lack of interest from Moreno himself, at this point, as well as his other commitments to fronting the Deftones, and the just recently resurrected synth-heavy side project he began over a decade ago, Crosses. 

The last gasp, before this reissue, of Team Sleep, was a frustrating and confusing one—the group, in 2015, released a short, live album, recorded in front of a small audience, taped in a rural recording studio setting in Woodstock, New York. The live album was rolled out through the now-defunct Pledge Music, which went bankrupt in 2019 after numerous reports of artists who had failed to receive payouts from setting up campaigns through the organization, and there was a lot of miscommunication, and confusion over what people who pledged money through the campaign were actually getting in return—was it a copy of this live album, which now, the vinyl pressing of sells for $300 on Discogs; or was the money going to help fund a new studio album from the group.

Returning, more or less, to their beginnings—outside of the reissue, there is reprinted Team Sleep merchandise available through a newly launched website—seems, to someone, like smarter idea rather than either remaining dormant or trying to look forward.

Nostalgia is a relentless hunter. It does really ely on how bad anyone wants to retrieve a feeling, or even an idea of a feeling. And this was an exercise, certainly, in returning to a place—a specific time, and specific moments, but the question is always how long do you wish to stay there.

The black vinyl pressing of Team Sleep will be released on June 21st, via Reprise Records.