Some albums emerge from a single rupture, but ‘Ghosts & Gardens’ was shaped by several arriving almost all at once.
For Sleeping Through Breakfast, the Pennsylvania duo of Joshua Kleiman and Zander Prokop, bereavement, the end of a long relationship and the disorientation of leaving college created a period in which everything appeared to be moving while life itself somehow felt suspended. Their latest album sits directly inside that contradiction, examining the uneasy overlap between affection and grief, possibility and fear.
Written entirely by Kleiman and produced largely by Prokop, the record reflects a creative partnership that began when the pair met as clarinet players in their high-school marching band. Years of learning how to write, record and shape music independently are audible throughout, but ‘Ghosts & Gardens’ doesn’t feel designed to advertise its technical effort. Its considerable detail remains in service of the songs, giving the album a handmade character without reducing its scope.
‘Willows’ demonstrates the duo’s quieter instincts particularly well. Double-tracked acoustic guitar, hushed vocals and live piano establish a fragile setting for a song about watching someone choose a path you fear may harm them. Its sadness comes from the recognition that caring for another person doesn’t grant control over their decisions. The narrator can offer concern and remain present, but eventually has to step aside, and Sleeping Through Breakfast allow that helplessness to linger, finding emotional weight in what cannot be prevented.
At the opposite end of the album’s range, ‘Eraser Marks’ gives its central interest in conflicting emotions a more dramatic form. Its opening section moves through self-reproach with an almost stage-like intensity, helped by clarinet and a deliberately uneasy atmosphere. Gradually, that internal collapse gives way to a brighter, brass-led passage that speaks with unusual directness about endurance. The transition could have felt overly neat, but the earlier darkness is not erased by the arrival of hope. Here, both states remain visible, which is precisely the point.
The contributions from the duo’s wider community deepen that sense of continuity. Helen Barsz brings bass to several tracks, while Adam Dougherty and Anderson Warshaw supply horns. Former school orchestra teacher Benjamin Weaver performs Kleiman’s string arrangement on closing track ‘Signs’, creating a particularly fitting connection between the musicians’ formative years and the work they are making now. While longtime friend Nathaniel Lemisch, who helped produce their earliest project in high school, returns to master the album.
These details matter because the collaborations here becomes a document of relationships; some enduring, some altered and some available only through recollection. Even as the songwriting focuses on separation, the recording process repeatedly draws people back together.
The influence of artists such as Elliott Smith, Bright Eyes, Death Cab for Cutie and Rilo Kiley can be heard in the album’s intimate performances, narrative ambition and interlocking guitar work. Yet the duo’s willingness to let sparse confession sit beside ambitious multi-part composition gives ‘Ghosts & Gardens’ a character all of its own.
This new record is strongest when it allows opposing truths to remain side by side. Loss can honour love. Uncertainty can frighten and liberate. A period of enormous change can still feel strangely motionless. Sleeping Through Breakfast don’t attempt to solve those contradictions. Instead, the duo gives them melody, shape and enough room to simply coexist.
