Hibernal holiday

>>Wintersleep rock Canada’s nooks
and crannies before leaving the country

RESTLESS: Wintersleep

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“Cabin fever is at a minimum,” reports Wintersleep singer and guitarist Paul Murphy, walking the streets of Kenora, Ontario, near the tail end of yet another cross-country tour, this time with the Wooden Stars. “We overdid it for our last record—we toured [Canada] five times.”

The Nova Scotia quintet’s clearly on the right track, one that will take them out of Canada this winter—they’re due to spend January in the U.S. before flying over to Japan. But these opportunities wouldn’t have arisen without the band’s determination to conquer their home turf, both in the flesh and from the studio.

Their third album is Welcome to the Night Sky, orchestrated by big-time Scottish producer Tony Doogan (Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub, Belle and Sebastian, Super Furry Animals, etc). The result is a powerful indie rock record that, like so much Canadian music, taps into the awe and melancholy of vast, open land. Then there are the magnetic hooks, the meaty riffage, the soaring melodies and the soothing vocals, elements that have drawn comparisons to bands such as Eric’s Trip.

“They definitely had a huge impact on me,” says Murphy, who drew more from the Moncton band in the mid-’90s than the celebrated Halifax scene of the time. Even Yarmouth, the small fishing village he grew up in, had its own music scene, one that inspired Murphy and his bandmates to take up instruments at the ages of 13 and 14. “For me, it was more about the local bands around Nova Scotia, on the outskirts of Halifax—it was the townie bands vs. the city bands. The city was so far removed from where I was. It seemed as far away as Toronto.”

And even though Wintersleep are about to step onto the international stage, they’re far from leaving their small-town origins behind. They make a point of hitting different backwater burgs on each tour, such as Brantford, Ontario, “the telephone city” (the birthplace of Alexander Graham Bell), and Grande Prairie, Alberta, an oil town where the band recently played a rowdy pool hall.

“Half the crowd was into it and the other half was playing pool on the other side of the room,” says Murphy. And even after that night’s hockey game ended, the bar staff left their TVs on, and blaring. “Even I get distracted—you’re playing and you find yourself watching TV, and it’s like, ‘What the hell? What are we here for?’ But it’s par for the course. It’s actually a kind of neat experience.”

With the Wooden Stars at
Club Lambi on Saturday,
Nov. 17, 9 p.m., $15