REVIEW: MF Tomlinson - Die To Wake Up From A Dream

Nope, not MJ Lenderman

63:58 // July 11, 2025 // PRAH Recordings

Die To Wake Up From A Dream simply exudes the sensation of a classic album. It’s soaked in grandeur, yet feels effortless - like the quiet confidence of a guy who saunters into every room he enters, doubtlessly aware of his own swagger, but always laid-back about it - trying too hard sure ain’t cool.

Credit to MF Tomlinson for going all out on his third LP - not only was this release recorded painstakingly, “meticulously captured one instrument at a time”, as the Bandcamp blurb notes, but this album has a sort of essential gravitas which is rare for music of any kind to really grasp. There’s an elegance, a stateliness, an almost aristocratic presentation to the artistic vision here. The actual sound is a hard-to-pin-down fusion of alt-country, psych guitar, and artsy pretension, all while exploring a conceptual foundation of dreams, their meanings, and much bolder “meaning of life” territory. All around, this is a hugely ambitious release which mostly delivers on its glorious potential.

Predictably, it’s this ambition which occasionally causes Die To Wake Up From A Dream to falter. As a nine track LP sprawling a bit over the hour mark, there’s little doubt that some trimming would’ve served the finished product well - I’ll illustrate this by noting the fourteen-plus minute closing track (“A Meadow (Part 2)”) naturally follows a nearly-five minute instrumental intro (“A Meadow (Part 1)”. Turns out both of those tunes are absolutely lovely, but that’s the kind of free-floating, occasionally unwieldy, sense of pace we’re dealing with. The real misses are found elsewhere - most egregiously with the album centerpiece “Your Flight (Dying/Another Dream)”, in which monotonous spoken word and abrasive sonic textures subvert the album’s primary formula to minimal success, but I’d also argue the instrumental “A Dream” earlier in the tracklist meanders too much, despite its pretty and atmospheric nature.

The issues cited in that last paragraph are significant enough that I’m wary of granting this album even the plaudit of “flawed masterpiece”, even if much of the time, this is an absolute musical gem. There is an absurd amount of wondrous beauty to be found here, though - opener “Blink And You’ll Miss It”, rich in cosmic feeling, slow and steady yet ornate, or the title track, a beautiful soundscape filled with energy pulled in intriguing directions, or “I’m On The Border”, with its tearjerking melancholy, among others. At its best, a level of quality frequently achieved, Die To Wake Up From The Dream perhaps most recalls the dreamy space country of Honey Harper’s Starmaker or the adventurous folk of Kevin Morby’s Singing Saw, both laudable comparisons, if not entirely apt - there’s a seriousness in the approach and a pomp in the execution which sets this apart - not for better or worse, just different.

Giving a final assessment of this album is challenging - the music feels dense enough and the vibe is so wonderfully engrossing that each listen feels more expansive than the already substantial runtime. Overall, I consistently find myself engaged, indeed captivated, and often deeply affected (“How can they tear us apart? The answer is they can’t”). But then again, the overall package does feel a bit overstuffed, and one of the longest tracks, the aforementioned “Your Flight (Dying/Another Dream)”, does little for me. Too, it’s important to note this is an album made for album listening - plenty of these songs would hold up well on their own, but there’s definitely a sense of greater context when placed like puzzle pieces within the greater whole. So yeah, I’ll just state that this is a record displaying a heavy batch of monumental highs alongside occasional noteworthy lows, and regardless of how you assess the weight of its full majesty, this is a release worth the attention of your ears. In an unending sea of new music, Die To Wake Up From A Dream feels remarkably distinct and wholly memorable, a sagebrush and tumbleweed journey pulled in the direction of the astral plane.

8/10