Halifax, NS Band Wintersleep
Review of Welcome to the Night Sky, Produced by Tony Doogan
Third album by alternative rock group Wintersleep follows 2005's Untitled effort and features songs like "Weighty Ghost", "Oblivion" and "Astronaut".
It’s not often a band’s name can reflect the sentiment of a particular album. Considering some of the ridiculous band names out there, this is probably a good thing. Yet Halifax, Nova Scotia band Wintersleep manage this quite nicely, thank you, with their third studio album Welcome to the Night Sky (Labworks Music/EMI). There’s something chilling and a bit lonely in the leaves of this song book. But where sleep also brings relief, the songs here are possessed of some warmth and comfort that cuts through the frost.
Songs and Lyrics: Weighty Ghost and "Where'd My Body Go?"
"Drunk on Aluminum” and “Archeologist” cry into the titular night sky as vocalist Paul Murphy channels the best bits of Scotland’s Snow Patrol and US band Grandaddy. “Dead Letter” does a fair Ron Sexsmith impersonation, with all the beauty and sparseness that implies.
“Weighty Ghost “dips into the alt-country-meets Arcade Fire-chorus pool and the lyrics will resonate with anyone who’s ever woken up feeling rough and lost: “I got out of bed today/Swear to God I couldn't see my face/I got out of bed today staring at a ghost/Who forgot to float away, didn't have all that much to say/Wouldn't even tell me his own name/Where'd my body go?”
“Search Party” has Murphy musing about the day-to-day, and concluding, sadly and realistically: “I used to dream about saving the world. Now I just dream about the holidays.”
Wintersleep's Oblivion?
In “Oblivion” and “Astronaut”, Wintersleep dig out their guitars again, a la England’s The Editors (a musical reference point carried through other parts of this disc). These songs offer catchy pop of the stuck-in-your-head ilk. It’s reassuring that the art of writing simply has not been lost on the 4-tet of Murphy, Tim D'Eon, Loel Campbell and Jud Haynes, who wrote the album. (Jon Samuel also joins the band on tour, and Mike Bigelow replaced Haynes, who left the band last year.)
As in "Weighty Ghost", there are many questions that go unanswered in Wintersleep’s world. For example, “Astronaut” details an imagined conversation between a between a preacher and a space traveller: “I heard it's kinda lonesome there/Nothing to talk to but a cold, cold air/Tell me, tell me what was it like?”
Veteran Producer Tony Doogan
It’s interesting and fitting that the band enlisted Tony Doogan as producer for this, their follow-up to 2005’s Untitled. Doogan’s credits include albums for trailblazing UK artists Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian and Super Furry Animals – inventive and adventurous company for the Haligonians to keep. In many respects, Night Sky channels some of the best elements of each of these bands and the production here is as crisp as the songs demand.
This album won’t set the world alight, but will perhaps cool it. There’s sincerity here – and careful attention to the craft. The cold, dark nights have never been this good.
Wintersleep will be touring Canada, the US (Seattle and Hollywood) and visiting Tokyo, Japan for some short promo gigs, in February, 2008.
