Wintersleep wakes up with new album, tour

By Michael Gorman

THE YARMOUTH VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

Paul Murphy sits on the back deck of his parents' home in Hebron drinking tea and looking out on Doctors Lake. He's on vacation — kind of. With the exception of festivals in Saint John and Antigonish, Murphy's band Wintersleep has been on extended hiatus since the spring. And while it's nice to have the downtown, he says, he's getting a little anxious.

"We've probably been off a month too long," he says with a laugh.

But the downtime is about to change. On Oct. 2 Wintersleep's new album, Welcome to the Night Sky, hits stores. It will arrive with a lot of expectations and curiosity. The band recorded with well-known producer Tony Doogan (Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian). How will that affect the album's sound? They have a new bass player, Mike Bigelow. Bigelow stepped in when original bassist Jud Haynes decided he was tired of life on the road. How will that change things?

All of these questions and more will be answered on Oct. 2 with the release of the album and on Oct. 13 in Montreal when the band, which also includes Yarmouth native Tim D'Eon, Loel Campbell and John Samuel, begins a two-month tour.

For his part, Murphy is concerned about none of this. He just wants to get back on the road and let people hear the new songs.

"I think that we always approach new records and tours for those records as a beginning point," he says. "I feel very lucky to be able to tour extensively and to do this for a living; not every band gets the opportunity.

"We definitely put more pressure on ourselves to step it up for people buying our records and to people who are going to watch us perform live . . . I like the challenge."

Simply put, Welcome to the Night Sky more than meets every challenge and expectation the band might have placed on themselves. The album is far and away the best thing the band has produced to date. The sound is bigger, Murphy's voice is stronger and the band is at its most creative. None of this is lost on Murphy.

"Us as a band, we've definitely developed," he says. "Tony definitely helped us capture what we wanted to capture . . . and knew how to do it more than we would have on our (own) . . . There are some songs on the other records that I felt should have been bigger but (we) just didn't know how to do it."

There's something very genuine about the way Murphy talks about his music. Maybe that's one of the reasons the band's popularity grows so much each time it hits the road — Wintersleep's music very much reflects the honest, genuine nature of its members.

The most striking thing about listening to the new album is how successfully the band captured the energy of their live performances. The disappointment and regret Murphy might possess for certain parts of previous albums is nowhere to be found with this one. He's very comfortable calling it the best thing they've done.

Beyond a tour that will take them across Canada and back with a stop in New York City, much is happening in the Wintersleep camp. The band is actively shopping the new album to American labels and a deal with a Japanese label, which would include a tour there sometime in the spring or summer, also appears imminent.

Their name continues to build, with countless indie music websites marking Oct. 2 as an almost momentous occasion (just last week one Halifax radio personality called them the best band to ever come out of Halifax).

There is the sense that this band, the one that has opened for Pearl Jam and Broken Social Scene and toured with the Tragically Hip, is just about ready for its own break.

"I think it's worked out better than I thought (it would) initially when the band started," says Murphy. "It seems to be growing quickly enough and just slow enough that it's been a good transition into what we're doing now."

Depending on how Welcome to the Night Sky is received and if you listen to the so-called experts, that all could soon change.