Canadian indie rock band Wintersleep haven’t released a record since 2012’s Hello Hum, something set to change this spring. The band have announced a brand new album called The Great Detachment, which supposedly sees a return to the raw and organic sound of their earlier albums. Perhaps this is because was recorded at the Sonic Temple in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the birthplace of the band’s first three releases. The album’s title also hints at thematic similarities to earlier Wintersleep output, so let’s hope for a maelstrom of postmodern disquiet that would make DeLillo proud.
The Wall Street Journal premièred the lead single, ‘Amerika’, last week, a track which frontman Paul Murphy says was inspired by Walt Whitman. His poem ‘America’ is a hopeful 1888 view of the nation (“Centre of equal daughters, equal sons / All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old”), something Murphy tries to channel in the lyrics, although the Amerika-with-a-K spelling also brings to mind Kafka and his abstruse, crushing systems. The result is something decidedly of the now, a track about being an individual in the arrangement, torn between romanticism and cynicism, hope and dread. About finding shelter and not giving in. Check it out below:
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The Great Detachment will be released on the 4th of March. You can pre-order it now via Dine Alone Records.
Photo by Norman Wong