The best pop artists play God in big bang fashion. They create universes where their personae alternately come apart at the seams and assault the heavens with larger-than-life ambition. From D. Bowie to N. Cave to N. Case we become inhabitants and voyeurs of their worlds. Perth Australia’s Luke Steele satisfies many pre-requisites for next pop godhead. On Personality, his band The Sleepy Jackson paints sonic murals that skirt heaven and scrape hell. The album’s acoustic guitar-driven “The Devil Was in My Yard” surrounds Steele’s tortured tenor with dervish swirls of shimmering voice and steel guitar while he recounts Beelzebub’s most recent incursion into his personal space. On mini-epic “God Lead Your Soul” Steele banishes his “sleeping dragons,” resolving to “keep (his) head up!” “You Needed More,” “Work Alone,” and “Higher Than Hell” pull you further into The Sleepy Jackson’s sonic snow globe—a zero gravity paradise where sleigh bells soothe while diaphanous strings and female voices caress. Personality is not without excess, though. Sometimes you have to swim through song arrangements to find the actual songs, but with an otherworld this inviting who cares if we get a little wet?
