Wintersleep isn’t Halifax’s secret anymore. After “Weighty Ghost,” a hit song that made depression seem fun, the world woke up to the sleep. And indie kids squinted, like spectral whales conjured on their first record might evaporate under bright lights.
Will they ever return to cult status, or take over radio? Probably neither. The new record Hello Hum shows a band in between, as liminal as October’s decaying parentheses between summer and encroaching darkness. It’s the right season to see these guys live.
On the song “Hum,” a spacey drone recedes to the occult intimacy of the lyrics. “I can only find you if you are looking for me,” Paul Murphy sings over tachycardic drums like Captain Ahab chasing his killer whale—or an estranged lover with a psychic hunch about his girl. For all its chaos, the track has mystic eloquence, odd and familiar. Tim D’eon, guitarist for the group, has an explanation.
“It was actually part of an old demo we did for Welcome To The Night Sky—it’s kind of in a stranger tuning, with totally different vocals, drums, only the same riff.”
The multiple perspectives in “Permanent Sigh” blend suicide note with involved witness- unifying on a spare melody: “All jokes aside/I’ll start over again,” But no one’s laughing. Tracks like “Sigh” are held back by overproduction, partly because the band had two talented producers for Hum.
“Dave Fridmann (the Flaming Lips) is really amazing at mixing, he’s really creative in that part of it. Tony Doogan (Belle and Sebastien) was doing most of the engineering,” D’eon says.
What punctures the studio veneer is tour-earned tightness. The dizzying arrangements on “In Came the Flood” and “Resuscitate” will blister to life live. D’eon talks collaboration during writing:
“When we’re working on demos in our rehearsal space, (drummer) Loel writes a lot of riffs. We’re always in working on ideas. For the most part it’s Paul’s ideas for the lyrics, he’ll consult us like, ‘What do you guys think about this?’”
“Saving Song,” a startling acoustic number, hangs an epitaph over the album: “If I come home bloody, will you still want me?” Murphy specializes in irresolvable love, but there’s a sea change on this record. Tortured questions don’t just hang, they’re grounded by twinges of resolve. “I won’t hide away my life/I won’t run/I’m by your side” like a man set before the wonder and horror of the untameable heart.
“Nothing is Anything (Without You)” veers close to adoration, but Murphy’s flat delivery seems to mask a primal need for warmth. “Rapture” is the catchiest song about feeling old and cold and taking “photographs of second thoughts” you’ll ever hear.
Wintersleep have exposure rare to Canadian rock bands, especially bands of such weird calibre. After several world tours D’eon mentions the pleasure of impromptu east coast reunions in places like Scandinavia. “It’s actually kind of rare even over there, to not find at least one person from the east coast at a show,” he says.
D’eon says they got the call to play Letterman a week before, but couldn’t get their Visas processed in time, so they headed toward the border with fingers crossed. “We went and told the border guard what we were doing, and he was really cool. He just said, “Wow, that’s awesome! Go ahead!”
Daring pays off for the band. When asked his favourite song to perform D’eon says, “‘Nerves Normal,’ because it’s different every night. It has this improvisational section, it could last from two minutes to who knows—we steer it off the seats of our pants”
Wintersleep play Olympic Hall with Elliot Brood, Rain Over St. Ambrose and Kestrels on Oct. 18.
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