Sleep - by Orange Peel

I haven’t slept well for almost two years. This is part and parcel of becoming a new parent. Things have actually got a little better recently, and our daughter is now sleeping for much longer stretches of the night. Unfortunately, my own sleep isn’t what it once was. I find myself waking at odd hours, one ear raised to the baby monitor. In fact, I’m often reminded of a great line in the film version of ‘The Big Sleep’ - where Philip Marlowe’s latest client, General Sternwood, says: “My sleep is so near waking that it’s hardly worth the name.”

Anyway, it’s gradually getting better. But this song, called (imaginatively) ‘Sleep’, was from one of the more difficult earlier phases. Certainly, the song sounds much more gloomy than I was feeling at the time. While I was working on the lyrics, I actually started to think more about those times in the past when I’ve suffered from insomnia, and how it always seems easier to sleep once the sun finally comes up, and your brain winds down enough to drift off. Some kind of lesson in that, I’d say.

Anyway, from memory, I was listening to a lot of slowcore music at the time, so the murky, nocturnal sounds are likely influenced by that. I quite like some of the guitar sounds and the low octave fuzz effect on the backing vocals. I’ve attributed this one to Orange Peel, but really, it feels like a song from another project entirely. Perhaps I’ll give that some more thought.

Lyrics:

I just wish that I could sleep now.

And I wish that it was dawn.

Coz I can sleep when it’s the daytime.

but I can’t sleep when it’s the night.

And I wish that I could sleep now.

And I wish that I could sleep.

—-

Thanks for listening. Until next time.

JCV