Expensive Vomit in a Cheap Hotel is the second album by Minnesota-based band Sleeping in the Aviary. Originally released on October 14, 2008, it was re-released on vinyl on July 26, 2012.[2]
Sleeping in the Aviary's frontman, Elliott Kozel, wrote some of the songs on Expensive Vomit in a Cheap Hotel while in a hospital in Colorado waiting to find out if his mom would die (she didn't).[2] The album was recorded soon after Kozel's mother's hospitalization, as well as a co-worker's brain aneurysm and a friend's drug overdose.[3] He has since said that he didn't like Expensive Vomit very much and that he thought there were "four good songs" on it,[2] and the album's style was "a conscious response to Panic! at the Disco’s last album", saying, "They weren’t keeping it real so we thought we’d try to add some flavor."[4] An article in Free Press Houston noted that Expensive Vomit's music took "a decidedly more folky and weighty approach" than did Sleeping in the Aviary's previous album, Oh, This Old Thing?.[5]
The album received mainly positive reviews; for example, The A.V. Club wrote that it "opens up the band’s tender side amid its lo-fi scars and unruly freak-outs,"[13] and Katjusa Cisar described it as "a blistering and catchy mix of punk, folk and rock".[14] Cisar later named the album one of the best Madison releases of 2008.[15] It was also ranked as the second best Madison album of 2008 by Rich Albertoni in Isthmus[16] and one of the 10 best "albums you didn't hear" of 2008 by Magnet.[17] Well-known music critic Robert Christgau awarded the album an A−, later ranking it #43 on his Dean's List for 2008.[18]
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