It has been 36 hours since your last drop of sleep.The heaviness of the night has been successfully fought off. A drive in your gut has fueled this self-imposed, insomniac adventure. The dry eyed madness of blank existence has been brought out not by any simple stimulant. The reason your body remains able to abstain from collapse lies not in coffee, twisted anxiety, or even the push of a white-pasted computer screen. The rival of sleep and cause of this gut-deep drive for awakeness is the non-stop playing of the record Sun Coming Down by the Canadian art punk band Ought.

Sun Coming Down works itself into the brain of the listener. The pull of the music only continuously increases upon each individual listen. Songs build and dart with simplicity, but sheer repetition and hypnotic looseness drive the cerebral stickiness of the album. The on-and-off nature of the music combats the soul, and strikes with impressions of oddity and the need to listen again. And again.

The sheer repetition within the album stands behind the hypnotizing lure beneath the music. Repeated chords strike patterns that weave in between the cracks of repeated vocals and occasionally chanting, near tribal lyrical assertion.

“Beautiful Blue Sky” holds up as an exemplary structure of the anxious, in-and-out trance-like nature Ought nails with precision. In the song, the same mundane phrases are repeated over and over to seemingly no end, only to build up a wall of anxious suspension that is finally released within the nihilistic chorus.

Additionally, “Passionate Turn” uses a slow buildup and simultaneous breakdown to empathize with apathy. The music simulates an environment of distance, thematically adding to the detrimental nature of distance expressed within the punctual lyrics.

Ought is not merely surface-level punk with brevity and punctuality in mind. The genius of Ought comes in the group’s capability to grab the mundane, and through sheer emphasis and repetition, craft new emotions. Through their manipulation, the Canadian collective cashes in on some of the best post-punk offerings in the punk scene today.