Salt Lake City emo band Sunsleeper release their debut full-length You Can Miss Something & Not Want It Back.

The album opens softly with heartfelt song Feel The Same, about how life can move and change rapidly without getting the chance to catch up. Moving into Soften Up, vocalist Jeffery Mudgett sings: “I’ve been trying to come to terms with it wasting my time for miles and miles on end.” The theme of the album shines through as the songs describe the changing circumstances the band has dealt with in the past.

I Hope You’re Okay deals with a broken connection with someone, whereas Souvenir builds on this theme and contains the lyric where the album got its name from. “Wasting time pretending it was more than it meant” Mudgett sings. Again, the theme of time wasted is prevalent. As the band describes the album: “You Can Miss Something & Not Want It Back chronicles the process of wrestling with the understanding of change and learning to accept it.”

Souvenir is a highlight on the album, perfectly combining acoustic vocals with louder riffs and great songwriting. The riffs continue on No Cure, Fading and Casual Mistakes, the latter two interchanging with soft vocals. At this point on the album, the songs are starting to blur together, both in sound and subject matter.

Single Better Now sports most likely Sunsleeper’s cutest music video ever, where a man goes on a road trip to reunite two cats. The song deals with feeling better after a rough time, wanting to move forward and make amends. “Burn the past and hope the ash won’t stick around” is one of the more poetic lyrics on the album and Better Now arguably the best song on the album. Closing track Home ends the album in style, delivering an emotional performance.

Despite most having a very similar sound, Sunsleeper’s songs on You Can Miss Something & Not Want It Back do have useful messages. They remind us that it’s okay to ask for help, that you can’t please everybody, that nothing worth living for comes easy and, most of all, that you can miss something and not want it back. Messages that everyone deserves to be reminded of once in a while, making the album a worthy listen.