Wintersleep

The guitars have risen to an Explosions in the Sky crescendo. The singer/guitarist’s pogo-ing. The keyboard-player’s standing on his stool, like it’s a swimmer’s starting block, and he’s about to dive into the crowd. Fists are raised in the front-row. Canadian girls are scurrying to get closer to the stage. My redundant cityworker friend is emerging from his deep, recession-induced despair. This is the 8-minute closing track from Welcome to the Night Sky, Wintersleep’s new album...and it’s the first song in their set.

“God,” I’m thinking, “the colossal hubris of this band...” – something I last thought two months ago, watching a review-copy of U2’s Under a Blood Red Sky DVD, on which a mulletted Bono exhorts the crowd to make some noise, if they want to be heard round the world, in spite of the fact his band have only made one vaguely listenable album at this point, i.e. 1983. That’s to say, you believe he can do it.

Okay, Wintersleep aren’t U2; nor are they the Canadian Interpol/Editors their record suggests, with its massive production, and the echo on Paul Murphy’s voice making him sound slightly inhuman – a rock-god persona at the flick of a switch. They’re so much more amiable than that. When they take the stage, Paul, for one, looks sort of the way Douglas Coupland would, fronting a band, or Seth Cohen grown up and playing his record collection... until his gawky moves, and oddly distorted word-endings suggest David Byrne and Tom Waits. From the first song, he’s flinging his blonde-wood Telecaster over his head, and pogo-ing when he gets a chance, but everyone gets a turn in the (figurative) spotlight, and whether soloing or singing the rest of the band love their “aaaah-ah”s and swooping harmonies.

The self-confidence extends past that first number: next up is the first single off the album, ‘Archaeologists’, then a racing, surging version of ‘Laserbeams’ (their most Editors-like track), and then a new song, ‘Encyclopaedic’, which makes me laugh because Murphy’s favourite authors are indeed known for their “encyclopaedic novels” (that would be David Foster Wallace, and Don DeLillo), but whereas he walked the line of pomposity with such references on the album, his humour comes through better, live.

A few songs in, a mumbled introduction might be referring to the name of another new song (likewise leaner than the older songs in the set, but no less catchy). Is this the ‘Charlie Brown Song’? Having kept on jittering and stamping my feet after most songs finish, I find myself standing apologetically, as the wordless chorus is belted out by the grinning guitarist / keyboard player; I’d join in, but – y’know – next time? Halfway through, the biggest applause comes when Paul picks up an acoustic – the album’s only been out a fortnight, and everyone knows it’s going to be ‘Weighty Ghost’, their James or (remember them?) Waterboys-moment.

There’s one mis-step – the tension-building break should have come after playing a devastating version of new-album-opener, ‘Drunk on Aluminum’, but instead we get a sped-up jam with vaguely spacey / prog guitar-effects. Inevitably, the encore is ‘Dead Letter’, the album’s meltingly beautiful piano ballad with a wintry / Christmassy feel, and lyrics bridging the horribly mechanistic realization your moods are ‘chemical imbalances’ and the expression of a more existential crisis “…and my ther-a-pist says / we evolved through / a series of acc-i-dents…”, which shows you the whole panorama of history, in all its futility. Here, as elsewhere, Paul can’t hang onto his notes long enough, or hit some of them, and the backing vocals are badly mixed and a little inelegant, meaning that the songs all rock, but rarely soar. It’s exactly the same problem Frightened Rabbit had, same venue, trying to reproduce their own immaculate album. Still, with this much energy as performers, and this much material (old and new), Wintersleep can only get better.