I Wish I Didn’t Dream is a haunting record. Guitarist Loren Connors and vocalist Suzanne Longille are the only musicians present, and they share the album with vast expanses of negative space. Connors’ guitar playing is sparse and otherworldly; it sounds like someone hammering on a pipe in an empty tunnel. Longille’s singing style is like Sprechstimme weighed down with barbiturates. She wanders over soundscapes, a heavy-lidded Pierrot.
Each track on the album corresponds to a painting by M P Landis reprinted in the CD insert. Longille contributes lyrics to most of the songs—bleak, tight verses suggesting confinement and uncertainty. Her delivery has a casual, tossed off quality. These songs are one-sided phone conversations, where Longille seems unsure if there’s someone listening on the other end.
“Just find your shoes [WD4572]” and “I don’t know [WD4642]” best capture this feeling. There are a few adaptations of 19th-Century works that have a forced quality but still fit within the larger context of the record. Connors and Longille work well in tandem throughout. On “It will only continue [WD4856],” Connors loosens his restraints and his guitar, in concert with Longille’s voice, is piercing, sinister—a duet poised over a void.
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