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Big Sleep Sounds the Alarm

Calling Sonya Balchandani the world’s most talented desi American female rocker might seem like a dubious compliment. But that doesn’t make it any less true. She is – there’s no question – a rare and wonderful breed: a strong bassist, vocalist, and one third of the popular post-psychedelic rock group the Big Sleep. She’s also […]

Aug 25, 2009

Calling Sonya Balchandani the world’s most talented desi American female rocker might seem like a dubious compliment. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

She is – there’s no question – a rare and wonderful breed: a strong bassist, vocalist, and one third of the popular post-psychedelic rock group the Big Sleep. She’s also a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania – an Ivy League school with a reputation for churning out not rock stars, but bankers (although Goldspot frontman Siddhartha Khosla is also an exception).

It was on campus, in the late 1990s that Balchandani met and befriended fellow student Danny Barria (“We clicked straight away.”). They began making music, moving to Brooklyn after graduation, where they recruited a third member, Gabe Rhodes, a drummer found through an ad placed online.

The Big Sleep was born. The three completed their debut EP, Son of the Tiger, in the spring of 2006. It generated all the right sort of underground buzz, and was passed around, eventually reaching an executive at French Kiss Records. They landed their first big contract with the company just weeks later.

Since then, the group has achieved a quiet sort of success, winning over serious music critics both abroad and here in the US. (Time Out New York, Pitchfork, Billboard and Fader have all come out in strong praise of the band). Their fan base, Balchandani tells me, is “diverse and young.” Connecting with them is something they value; something they’ve been able to do, as a fixture on the American summer music festival scene.

The group has made appearances at Bonnaroo, SXSW, and Coachella. They’ve shared a stage with Broken Social Scene, played New York’s Knitting Factory and Mercury Lounge. They’ve toured across the country more than once.

When I catch Balchandani recently she is in New York City, where she lives and works as a web designer by day. Michael Jackson has just died, and the news is saturated with tributes to his legacy. She is saddened by his passing and tells me his impact was staggering; perhaps unrepeatable.

“Everywhere around the world, people were listening to the same songs,” she says. “Michael Jackson’s music had that kind of unifying power.” This is, she suggests, what music is ultimately about – connecting to people, and connecting people to one another. “He did that,” she says, “on the largest scale ever. It was unique and it probably won’t ever happen again.”

It probably won’t. It’s estimated that Michael Jackson sold roughly 100 million copies worldwide of 1982’s Thriller – an album that spent over 31 weeks atop the Billboard charts. Music just doesn’t sell like that anymore. Today, a big week for an artist will translate into about 200,000 records sold. The scale is very different now.

Here in the States, record shops have been feeling the steady pinch for years. These days when people do buy music, it’s not an album – they make their purchases online, one track at a time. It is safe to say Jackson’s numbers will likely never be approached, let alone matched, again.

Then there’s the question of superstardom. Can we have a pop cultural icon as big as Michael again? In an era dominated by Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and MTV offshoots, the answer to that might also be, for better or for worse: ”˜no.’ As consumers, we are fatigued.

Today’s music landscape is different. But it is one that is perhaps more democratized. It’s an era where groups like the Big Sleep can achieve steady success producing good, earnest, rock & roll.

Sonya and crew’s current album, Sleep Forever, came out last year. Chris Coady (TV on the Radio; the Yeah, Yeah Yeahs; Blonde Redhead) gets co-production credits. And the band is currently at work on a follow-up. This one, they’re approaching differently: writing and composing slowly, collaborating in a way they hadn’t before.

Balchandani tells me they’ve never been to India (“The opportunity hasn’t presented itself”), but that they’d love to someday. For now, she and Danny and Gabe are content to hit the road locally – playing bars and taverns, indie music festivals and college pubs – wherever the fans are. It’s the way things are now.

And that’s just fine by them.

Visit the Big Sleep online at myspace.com/sonofthetiger to sample their music, and to get album updates.

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