Welcome to the Night Sky was kind of a big deal for Wintersleep, turning the Halifax fivesome into a Juno-winning, McCartney-opening minor juggernaut. Lest you worry that a taste of success changes bands, or that the pressure of following it up would get to them, New Inheritors arrives sounding, well, like a Wintersleep record. If […]
Ryan McNutt
Posted inArts + Music
The National
The National is not a “love at first sound” band. Maybe Alligator or Boxer knocked your socks off from note one, but if you’re like me, those albums snuck up on you, like a slow-burning affair that you didn’t realize you were in until you were already head-over-heels. High Violet, similarly, is the sort of […]
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Waiting for Wintersleep
Excited about the return of Wintersleep? Bassist Mike Bigelow might have you beat. “It’s like a celebration after all the work that we put into the record,” says Bigelow, on the phone from London, England. “It’s great having people excited about our new material and getting to hear it—and hopefully appreciate it.” So far, so […]
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Frog Eyes
Frog Eyes’ Carey Mercer doesn’t make his music easy to like, even though there’s much to like about it. From the manic, affected vocals to the sprawling, distorted arrangements, his songs bleed passion—so much so that sometimes his pop sensibilities just can’t contain it all. Almost half of the songs on Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph […]
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The New Pornographers
The past decade was littered with one-album wonders—bands that emerged fully formed on their first release and never quite figured out how to follow it. The New Pornographers, in contrast, have managed to add nuance and depth to their formula with regularly great results. Listeners who never quite moved on from Mass Romantic’s wall-of-sound thrills, […]