Winterpills - Passion and Intellect

If there was something merely promised, and not yet fulfilled, in Winterpills, on this record the band's music fully reaches its proper calibration, the real expression of what before was only potential – and intuition. The fusion of Neil Young, his country shamanism, the pop of Fleetwood Mac and the “alt” vibrations that look back to the 90s of “Shameful” condense into two and a half minutes what Winterpills achieve across the whole of The Light Divides, with incredible naturalness and economy.

What was once the just-blossomed arpeggio of “A Benediction” now soars with clarity in “Handkerchiefs”, with a great instrumental close. It's precisely thanks to the band's work that Price's songs climb back up from the black well from which the songwriter's creativity draws its energy (see the triumphant waltz of “A Ransom”), accompanying him through a convalescence in which everything, via a single flute note or a squeeze of accordion, becomes warm and welcoming. Or else by sharpening Price's emotions, turning them into a stream of consciousness in which to unload his own anxieties, in a genuine detox.

Such is the case with one of the band's best-known songs, “Broken Arm”, in which the Camus-like alienation of the arm from its own hand, of a farmer from his own harvest, spills over onto the listener, lodging itself there with the urgency of this desperate, furious dialogue with higher powers (“The decider/says I'm a fighter/but I can't feel my/fucking legs”), expressed with powerless yet liberating vital force by Hower's uptempo beat and Crommett's new-new-wave riff.

The Light Divides is, in fact, anything but an introverted album, as shown by the Beatles-esque little march of “Angels Fall”, and by the undelivered love letter of the country-pop of “July”. As writer Jonathan Lethem wrote of the record, “it's as if Winterpills had brought to light the songs you were already humming to yourself, without even knowing it.”

Every track on this album is, indeed, not only a gut-punch (particularly the grand, quietly piercing “Lay Your Heartbreak”), but also a melodic construction hard to forget, with no arrangement that isn't functional in making it shine. Without denying itself the odd reinvention, as in the Wilco-esque “I Bear Witness” (see Wilco). In this respect, the album is a genuine contender for one of the great hidden classics of 2000s Americana.

New, fragile horizons

The following album, Central Chambers, had a more complicated gestation: in the years leading up to it – three after The Light Divides – Price was diagnosed with a heart condition that, while not endangering his health, shook up his inspiration, steering this record too toward themes of life's fragility, animated by a “secret blue thread” (“Secret Blue Thread”).

Musically, the album reflects Price's desire to begin a process of gradually recalibrating his own sound, ranging from lo-fi sketches in the style of Iron & Wine (“Everything”) to significant enrichments of his arrangements, which also benefit from a much more substantial production (most notably the hit “Take Away The Words”, which even found its way onto an episode of Grey's Anatomy).

Once again the band doesn't disappoint in crafting a refined, pleasant alt-country sound, as in "Beesting" and "You Don't Love Me Yet", which even boasts multiple vocal harmonies; but, partly due to a waning expressive intensity, partly due to an irresoluteness in the chosen solutions and styles (there's a return to the '90s and to sparser sonorities on "Gentleman Farmer", which once again tells the story of a farmer who dies of a heart attack after losing his farm), Central Chambers unmistakably stands as a so-called "transitional" record in the Winterpills' output.

Price's guitar still seems reluctant to move away from the Young-esque stylistic traits that marked the band's early records, and the result is a further loss of personality for the album, which lacks any tangible spark of inspiration.

The ambition underlying Central Chambers instead finds full realization on the following EP, Tuxedo Of Ashes, which Price himself describes as an "arranged marriage between verbose epic and modest haiku". The band recovers the chamber-music breath and the bucolic, reflective poetry of its songs, while completely changing its arrangements, drawing on Melissa Nelson's cello contributions on the subtly unsettling "Feed The Spider".

The desire to once again expand their expressive boundaries leads the band, on Tuxedo Of Ashes, to explore far less intuitive sonic and expressive territories than in the past, for instance adopting the form of a mantra on "Hallway (The Top Of The Velvety Stairs)", or building choral progressions on simple, circular melodic themes, as on the title track. The transition away from the most recognizably Price-ian compositions ("The Ballad Of The Anxious Decoder") feels smoother here, and the goal of broadening their scope becomes more understandable - partly also as a way to mask a certain decline in the melodic immediacy of Price's songs.

In fact, we have to wait for the record for which Tuxedo Of Ashes serves as an ideal rehearsal, that being All My Lovely Goners, released in 2012 - by then four years after the last LP - for the band's songwriter to manage to combine the band's new musical ambitions with songs that are finally melodically inspired - songs that could in short exist (and often do, right there on the record) even without such a heavy instrumental apparatus.

That's the case with the excellent "Amazing Sun", almost too catchy and sunny, precisely, compared to the usual Winterpills output, with the Simon And Garfunkel-like idyll of "Feather Blue", the earthy alt-country of "Rogue Highway" and the "Rumours"-style feel of "Dying Star". A resigned and, all things considered, more subdued naturalistic agnosticism permeates tracks like "The Sun Is Alone" and "October", both thematically and in the arrangements (the vibrant acoustic coda is lovely), but it's the persistence of an inner dialogue, evidenced by "Minxy", and of an unconfessed, undefined yearning ("Sunspot (Ruins)") that confirms a refocusing of Price's inspiration toward the themes that truly belong to him (see also the beautiful "Pretty Girls") - alongside a return to the more straightforwardly pop qualities of his songwriting.

In short, it's a record that sets aside ponderousness and a certain minimalist pride, choosing instead to be listened to, letting the listener take their fill savoring the finely woven fabric of its tracks.

It's mostly for the sake of completeness that we should note the subsequent release by the Winterpills, four years after their last album of new material, and two after the covers collection Echolalia. Good omens or bad, these years of waiting produce, at best, the much-feared "return to roots" - as is often the case, especially on paper.

The drier, more melancholy folk-pop of Elliott Smith ("The Swimmers And The Drowned"), which recalls the recently reissued self-titled debut, and in general a more intimate atmosphere ("Diary, Reconstructed") or one that's more "true" to its alternative roots (also in the power-pop of "Celia Johnson") and less sunny than on the previous record, fail to live up to their promise, merely repeating what's already been said, the same chiaroscuro, the same narrative flavor of Philip Price's songs.

It might briefly satisfy devotees of '90s American alternative singer-songwriting, with its lopsided big ballads ("Wanderer White"), but in substance it's only a pale shadow of what's already been done.

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