reviews / 2012

WINTERSLEEP - Hello Hum

Name: WINTERSLEEP – Hello Hum
Item: Hello Hum
Rating: 4.5
Author: Lorenzo Righetto

2012 (Capitol/ emi)

alt-rock

by Lorenzo Righetto

4.5

Buoyed by a commercial success they'd never tasted before with their previous album “New Inheritors” (2010), the Wintersleep now return with a nice major-label deal and an album that – it pains us to say, since we'd love this unpleasant myth to be debunked – does everything it can to please it.

Electric-electronic blasts, decidedly low-grade quiet-loud dynamics, chipped-off riffs and an Editors streak that flattens Paul Murphy's voice into a nasal declamation (“Rapture”). When they namecheck Arcade Fire and Springsteen (“Hum”), they bury them under a carpet of fragmented percussion and vague choral washes and reverb. Or they don't even bother tidying up, and “Unzipper” shows up in the tracklist, with the spirit of Tom Smith suddenly taking hold of the song.

To make this “Hello Hum” more palatable, there's of course no shortage of electronic sparkle and blaring big riffs (“Resuscitate”), perfect devices for staging a few lighting tricks on the stages that matter and distracting from the sheer compositional thinness of the songs on offer; though perhaps that's better than going acoustic, as on the bland “Saving Song”. Then there are the more horrifying moments: the synth harmonies (a bit Beach Boys, a bit Band Of Horses) of “Someone, Somewhere”, the track meant to prove that “we can get weird too” (“Permanent Sigh”, as if Editors were trying to pass themselves off as Grizzly Bear, or Wolf Parade).

So, forgive the throwback quote, but… Arm yourselves and go forth!

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

31/10/2012

Share on

This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Lorenzo Righetto, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition