There’s a very specific kind of insomnia that doesn’t feel like panic; it feels like paperwork. That’s where Wake Up lives. The debut EP from Darling I Dreamt isn’t so much an emotional breakdown as it is a carefully-filed stack of late-night thoughts, catalogued during the long, grey hours where your brain refuses to shut off and your body forgets how to rest. Across four genre-melting tracks, the project doesn’t offer clean catharsis or neatly packaged lessons. Instead, it builds something messier and ultimately more useful: a sonic blueprint for what it sounds like to stay alive when everything inside you is trying not to be.
The opener, “I’m So Sick and Tired (of the Same Town),” is Midwest emo in a Red Bull fugue state, complete with a chaotic, endearingly unhinged feature from glitch-pop shapeshifter CMTEN. If you’ve ever cried at a suburban gas station or felt jealous of your own memories, this is your song. It thrashes with nostalgia and resentment, but never loses the plot. You can practically hear the walls of your childhood bedroom closing in.
“Severed Ties” shifts gears into something colder, clearer. Built around the disorienting experience of navigating ADHD diagnosis in adulthood (which is a nice way of saying “your brain has been playing you for years”), the song unspools slowly, like a decision you’re still not sure was the right one. It’s about peeling off the version of yourself that made sense to everyone else and asking, “What if I was wrong about everything?” It doesn’t answer that question. It just sits with it, which is harder.
Then there’s “I’m in a Bad Place Lately,” which is probably the most fun you’ll have spiraling in public. The track is a high-speed apology to every friend you ghosted, every plan you flaked on, every text you left unread for a week. It feels like a rave inside a panic attack, and I mean that as a compliment.
But the heart of the EP is “Darling, I’ve Just Had the Worst Dream,” a sprawling, two-part odyssey that sounds like sleep paralysis scored by shoegaze guitars and existential dread. It’s a track about recurring childhood nightmares, mental illness, and a really good day spent with a friend. That contrast is the point. Life isn’t always one or the other. Sometimes the worst and best parts of you sit next to each other on the same park bench. Darling I Dreamt wrote this one over 18 months, and it shows. The song doesn’t build to a climax; it dissolves into one.
Wake Up isn’t an EP that tries to fix you. It doesn’t even pretend to know how. What it does do is meet you where you are, staring at the ceiling, headphones in, hoping the next thing you hear makes you feel a little less weird and a little more seen. In that way, it’s not just music; it’s company.
Put it next to underscores, dltzk, or blackwinterwells in your “not doing great but vibing anyway” playlist. Let it rattle around your head for a bit. And maybe use it as a reminder that falling apart doesn’t always sound like screaming. Sometimes it sounds like waking up.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
