WINTERSLEEP
untitled
Dependent Music
· Ambitious and remarkably accessible. If Swervedriver and Radiohead lived in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and started a record label, this is what it would sound like.
Not since Eric’s Trip has a Canadian band managed to so successfully combine music that’s both head-smashingly heavy and heart-achingly delicate. That’s where the comparisons between these two East Coast groups should end, though. Wintersleep’s sound isn’t remotely lo-fi (this, their untitled second album, was recorded live off the floor by Laurence Currie, the man behind Sloan’s One Chord To Another). This is a big, grand, dreamy, atmospheric effort – the kind of record that needs the headphones turned way up and the lights turned way down.
Paul Murphy, the band’s lyricist and rhythm guitarist (often acoustic), has a gift for arranging simple childlike lyrics into longing, trancelike cycles: "I miss your smile/ I miss your smile/ I need you now/ I need you now/ I am not scared of falling down/ I am not scared of dark, dark clouds" (from "Fog"). His vocal style has been compared in the past to that of Hayden, but since I hate Hayden’s singing and I love Wintersleep, I would say that is inaccurate. (I’d sooner point to Chris Cornell from Soundgarden.)
Wintersleep sounds and feels bigger and more emotionally engaging than what Canadian indie rock seems capable of producing. Tim D’Eon’s space-laser guitars (as one fan described them) sound like an updated version of what was coming out of post-shoegazer England a dozen years ago. I always thought of Swervedriver’s Mezcal Head as one of the greatest rock albums of the last 20 years. This is as close to that level of perfection as I’ve experienced in a long time.
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