Life changes without your permission, and the world doesn’t ask for your input when it behaves as it does. Berner Trail’s response? “Sleep Till The Afternoon.”
In the latest single from the Scarborough-born, Toronto-raised rock trio, Berner Trail unleashes about the unending transformations the song, the band, and everything around them are always experiencing.
In 2015, Spencer Desilva and Aaron Lusch launched Berner Trail. The duo eventually grew to three, then expanded to four, was five for a short period, and later retracted back to three in 2020 with a new bass player: Nate Murray. Desilva, Lusch, and Murray have stood together since.
It’s been a chaotic history for the band, and this song’s skeleton was around for most of it.
“‘Sleep Till The Afternoon’ was a song going through constant change, alongside the changes happening in the Berner Trail band,” the band said. “From changing members, to styles, to ideals, ‘Sleep Till The Afternoon’ is Berner Trail and saw most of these changes happen while it remained in writing.”
For Berner Trail, real-life stimuli has always been the impetus for its imagination. The members’ feelings formed from interpersonal relationships and their dissatisfaction with the society that surrounds them often inspire the music they create.
With a yearning voice reaching for something it cannot grab, Desilva serenades over solemn yet punchy instrumentals with a tasty alt-rock sound.
”He said I got some friends at least I think I do
I’d sure like some if you really want to
Alone is all I’ve ever been
I’d lay in bed till 2 or 3
I just don’t feel so satisfied.”
Before settling on its three modern members in 2020, Berner Trail utilized a different style. Originally, most of the group’s sound revolved around an experimental approach to blues-rock, incorporating percussion and stringed acoustic instruments into the fold. But the band has since evolved to make ballads like this that are more akin to Nirvana than The Rolling Stones.
“‘Sleep Till The Afternoon’ went through different variations musically as our sound changed,” the band explained. “We think lyrically it resulted from feelings of isolation and disillusionment as to what was next to come in our lives as individuals.”
We can all relate to the feeling of time passing us by, of life pushing us in certain directions, and to the fear of uncertainty. Berner Trail’s “Sleep Till The Afternoon” taps into these universal feelings and gives us a shoulder to lean on when it all becomes too much.
