Wintersleep – Welcome to the Night Sky

It’s all a bit beige, a bit Dulux neutrals colour card…

It’s all a bit beige, a bit Dulux neutrals colour card…

Wintersleep – Welcome to the Night Sky

(One- Four- Seven Records)

Welcome to the Night Sky, third album by Canadian rockers Wintersleep is one of those albums that you put on then struggle to remember anything about when they finish. Paul Murphy’s plaintive vocals seem to slide in one ear and out the other without so much as raising a flicker of emotional engagement, at times sounding like a more intelligible Michael Stipe (particularly on Astronaut which manages to be even more REM by numbers than REM’s own recent offerings); at others seemingly weighed down by the gravitas of saying nothing of import in the most serious of tones, a trick so beloved of Interpol’s Paul Banks. Murderer certainly wouldn’t be out of place on Antics and along with Oblivion is one of the better tracks on an otherwise functional album.

 

Weighty Ghost sees them beg, steal and borrow from Paul Simon circa Graceland; Search Party is all a bit Counting Crows and Laser Beams is just Editors-lite, if such a thing were possible. It’s all a bit beige, a bit Dulux neutrals colour card, so that when it finally ends (for those that care the UK release sees two bonus tracks added to the album) you’re left wondering exactly why they felt the need to make this record at all. Perhaps there’s market out there for such coffee table blandness, or maybe mediocre has finally become the new cool.

 

Words: Cold Ethyl