For me, a band like Wintersleep is kind of hit or miss. Unfortunately, I find I have to strike down their newest album, New Inheritors, on the miss side.
When I reviewed Wintersleep’s 2007 record, Welcome to the Night Sky, I had both a lot of high praise for it, and some concerns. I remember writing about the album’s first half, the opening five songs, or so. I remember not being able to get passed them—they were so good. But that was also a fault I found in the album: the top-half was incredible, the songs were well-crafted, well-written and extremely interesting to listen to. Songs like Weighty Ghost, which I count among my favourite songs of all time. But the latter part of the record was a bit dry and a lot less interesting in comparison to the first bit.
What it seemed like to me was that we’d hit upon a band that could write some really great material, but not all the time. A band that had all the elements in place to make great music, but sometimes weren’t putting in all the effort, or mustering up all the creativity or whatever to really make it happen.
I’m not entirely convinced that New Inheritors is the result of the kind of mustering and effort that I’m talking about. I’m just not sure.
When I review an album there are a few different approaches that I can take. Sometimes I’ll listen to nothing but that album for a couple of weeks to get a feel for it. Other times, I’ll get a whole bunch of new music at once and listen to all of it on shuffle, in the background, and keep my ears peeled for something that stands out. In this case, it was the latter approach, that over the past couple of weeks I’ve heard lots of great music, but when Wintersleep has popped up in that shuffle, I haven’t been too impressed.
Giving it a closer listen to I still haven’t found a whole lot I’m interested in.
New Inheritors showcases a much more uptempo Wintersleep than their last effort. A lot of these songs I would class as “poppier” but, in my view, that isn’t necessarily a good thing. On the quicker-paced songs I get the impression that vocalist Paul Murphy is really straining to keep up. It doesn’t suit his vocal style, it’s rushed and breathless. And while there’s definitely some interesting material here, it strikes me as a lot of internal repetition—a lot of the songs sound too similar and, for me, that gets boring quick.
But, I don’t know. I’ve struggled over this review for a couple of weeks now. New Inheritors is a good album, but it doesn’t strike me as great. It’s missing the incredibly-crafted kind of music that we found on Wintersleep’s last record. Their move in a more uptempo direction, I argue, is a misstep. The music is strained and, at times, the band just seems bored. As much as I do love Wintersleep, and count some of their songs among my favourites, as a whole this album is a bit of a disappointment.
Leave a Reply