The first keyboard chords build with intensity before Paul Murphy’s tenor filters into the song’s frame. It’s a voice you’ve heard before: One that lights up that innermost part of your ear, like the first crackle of a needle on vinyl. A good voice—a great one, even. The kind of voice that commands JUNO accolades and a guest spot on The Late Show with David Letterman. The chords build some more, and then the lyrics land: “I don’t know who I am, cancelled all of my plans. I’m just trying to make a life here, but goddamn.” And like that, you’ve cancelled your plans, too. Some music just has that effect. Paul Murphy’s latest solo effort, Run Wild, belongs in that category.
Two years removed from the Yarmouth-raised, Halifax-based singer-songwriter’s last solo album, Twin Flames, the Wintersleep frontman is back with another full-length release. The 10-song Run Wild is warm, bright and expansive; it sees the 42-year-old indie rocker sprinkle in pop influences (“Mine The Sea,” “Run Wild”), guitar riffs (“Moons”) and stripped-back productions that sound as if Blonde-era Frank Ocean picked up a six-string (“Twigs Underfoot”). That’s a byproduct of how it came together, Murphy says.
“From the start of COVID, I had a lot of time working on my own,” he says, speaking over a video call with The Coast. “It was eye-opening—just having the ability to work on more songs at my own pace, and having time—whether it was forced by COVID or not—to really decide what kind of record I wanted to make.”
Murphy is a veteran songwriter. The lead singer of indie mainstays Wintersleep since the band’s founding in 2001, he fell in love with music as the seventh child—sixth boy—in a family of 10 kids.
“My older brothers all listened to music a lot,” he says. “A lot of really heavy music, for the most part. A lot of sub-pop music. A lot of underground.”
Growing up on the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia—a three-hour drive from Halifax—there was room to create and experiment without too much influence. Room to be loud, too. (“One of the great things about living in such a remote place is that you can jam and rehearse as much as you want,” Murphy told an interviewer in 2016.) Then, there was the record store. Yarmouth wasn’t teeming with options, but it did have a Record On Wheels franchise—one that Holy Fuck’s Brian Borcherdt happened to work at.
“He brought in a lot of really cool music into Yarmouth—so there was [stuff] that you wouldn’t normally find in a smaller town like that,” Murphy adds.
He discovered Mudhoney. Sonic Youth. The Afghan Whigs. Then, songwriters like Neil Young and Leonard Cohen. Paul Simon. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.
“Simon’s a great lyricist,” Murphy says. “And Thom Yorke has a lot of meaning [in his songs] without saying all that much. He’s one of my favourite songwriters nowadays.
“It’s interesting: Not saying a lot is sometimes more important than [saying everything].”
“Not saying a lot is sometimes more important than [saying everything].”
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Murphy can spin a story in a song with the best of them—Wintersleep’s “Weighty Ghost” took the Nova Scotia band around the world—but on Run Wild, some of his best lines come from the fewest words. The album’s third song, “Look to the Stars,” begins as a lullaby to Murphy’s son, but deepens when he reflects on those stars’ fleeting nature: “They all burned out so many years ago,” he writes, “we only dance in the afterglow.”
Recorded between Murphy’s Halifax home and The Tragically Hip’s Bathouse Recording Studio outside of Kingston, Ont., the album came together under the watch of Grammy Award-winning record producer Joe Chiccarelli (The Strokes, Morrissey, The White Stripes).
“He’s amazing,” Murphy tells The Coast. “Joe was really integral in that recording process… just those extra little bits where he’d be like, ‘This part sounds kind of like a 12-string guitar. Why don’t we try a 12-string guitar and put it there?’ And helping guide the live performance aspect of it as well.”
Halifax wasn’t always home for Murphy, but it sure feels like it again these days. As Wintersleep caught a wave from 2007’s Welcome to the Night Sky—the band won the JUNO Award for “New Group of the Year”—Murphy and his bandmates relocated to Montreal. He stayed for 10 years. Still, he felt the pull of home.
“It was a beautiful place to live, but I always had it in mind to come back [to Nova Scotia],” he says. “I can see my parents or family any weekend I want to, which is great. It was also really good being here over COVID, as opposed to in a duplex with no balcony—which is where I was living in Montreal. There’s more space, and the possibility to get outside of the city. It’s been great in that sense.”
Returning to Nova Scotia has also brought Murphy closer to some of his band’s brightest memories—whether recording Wintersleep’s debut album at the old Lunenburg Opera House, or their follow-up at the Sonic Temple and the since-closed Idea of East, or getting handpicked by Paul McCartney to open up for the Beatle in front of 50,000 fans at the Halifax Common.
“That was amazing,” Murphy laughs. “It was the weirdest thing. We had another show booked already in Ireland—this festival that was supposed to happen like 12 hours later. But then we got the Paul McCartney offer, which was like, ‘Well, we have to do that. And we’ll just take a midnight plane or whatever.’ So we played the show. He came out and chatted with us for a little bit… but then we didn’t get to see his set. We had to take a bus right away and go to the airport.
“It was funny, he was like, ‘Is this some kind of warm-up show for you guys?’”
When Murphy takes the stage at the Seahorse Tavern on Thursday, Dec. 7, it will definitely not be a warm-up show. There is no plane waiting to take the singer to Ireland. No idling bus that will ride off into the night. He has plenty more shows to come—Murphy plays a string of shows in London, Windsor and Tillsonburg, Ont. starting tonight, and flies west to Vancouver in April—but for now, he’s quite happy to be home. The Seahorse has been good to him.
“The first time I played with POSTDATA was a nice memory,” he says. “Actually, one of the first times we ever played with Wintersleep during the Halifax Pop Explosion was a special show. It was after our first record came out, and it was one of our first shows—it felt exciting to play in front of a full room.”
Tickets are still available for $21.85. Doors open at 8:30pm. The show starts at 9pm.
Get ready to cancel your plans.
