Since winning the coveted Juno Award for achievement in music earlier this year and re-issuing their first two albums with a major label subsidiary (to considerably more success than when they were first released), Wintersleep have sealed their place in the Canadian indie rock canon alongside groups like the Weakerthans and Broken Social Scene. The similarities end there though, as the Nova Scotia quintet instead favor tighter, heavier rock anthems. Wintersleep have found their popular niche and are cautiously experimenting, though that is not to say that they're timid. Like toes grazing icy waters, they have the potential to go farther yet seem to resist, pushing hard against their limits without ever fully stepping outside of them.
Welcome to the Night Sky, Wintersleep's third album, is largely composed of straightforward yet emotional rock comparable to Band of Horses and early R.E.M., particularly on songs like "Astronaut", where singer Paul Murphy's voice soars triumphantly over a jangle of guitars with reassuringly familiar yet effective melodies. Since most of the tracks are between two and four minutes, there is little time for meandering, and Wintersleep have a tendency to cut straight for the gold with infectious guitar lines and persuasive, high-energy choruses. The band's self-control usually works in their favor, however, and they are able to translate grand ideas in a relatively short amount of time so the songs communicate successfully without ever having the opportunity to become exhausting. And although Wintersleep may stick to a fairly loose formula, they also color their music with impressive motifs. The album's organ-driven centerpiece, "Weighty Ghost", sounds like it's channelling Paul Simon with cleverly layered group backing vocals and subtle handclaps that end up making the song more memorable and the sound fully encompassing. Both "Dead Letter and the Infinite Yes" and "Murderer" provide a platform for Murphy's darker musings on mental illness, supported by guitars that twist and swell beneath like they're trying to fight their way out of an unlit maze.
It is drummer and founding member Loel Campbell, however, who provides Wintersleep's magic touch. While the group's songwriting certainly pulls off a trick or two, the end result would have significantly less impact under the treatment of a weaker rhythm section. The passion behind Campbell's attentive, driving beats gives the songs a grittier edge, the lyrics more feeling, and pushes along the rest of the band with a momentum that connects the listener to the song faster than one might anticipate at the outset.
Welcome to the Night Sky has a tendency to sound like accessible indie rock by the numbers-- an empathetic ballad here, a stadium fist-puncher there-- but Wintersleep maintain a strong identity that sets them apart from less interesting contemporaries. It's actually the album's eight-minute closing track, "Miasmal Smoke & the Yellow Bellied Freaks", that shows a different side to the group's potential. Here they slacken the reigns a little, getting lost in an epic swirl of guitar reverb that recalls Explosions in the Sky and keeps building with a determination and inventiveness that will hopefully carry through to further recordings.
