Wintersleep

First, I am a huge wintersleep fan and have been for years.

I started listening to Wintersleep before starting university in 2007, and was lucky to see them play at the Wolfe Island Music Festival outside of Kingston Ontario in maybe 2009 or 2010. That show set my standard for a great show! The energy at that show was amazing, and Wintersleep played an increidble live show that had the whole crowd singing along.

Fast forward to 2016. Im still a huge wintersleep fan and can always count on Welcome to the Night Sky to liven my day. I've also enjoyed the newest album, The Great Detachment, more so than their previous "New Inheritors" and "Hello Hum", and was stoked to be seeing them live again in Vancouver.

To be honest, from the start of the show I was pretty dissapointed. The energy that I experienced previously simply wasn't there. The band hardly interacted with the crowd at all, and the sound didnt feel right. The lyrics seemed overpowered, and the vocals seemed auto-tuned or unnatural. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I just felt like it was 'another show' to the band, and lacked anything special.

I won't be giving up on Wintersleep just yet, but i'll definitely be less likely to pay for a live show again when it felt so impersonal and lacked the sound and energy that got me hooked on Wintersleep to begin with. I wanted to love it so much!

Karen O has become someone to watch after her hauntingly gorgeous song 'Moon Song' (in collaboration with Ezra Koenig) was featured in Spike Jonze's newest film, 'Her'. She performed the song live at the Oscars 2014 with Koenig, and it's almost shocking that she didn't win the Academy Award for it at the time. She has an almost ethereal voice, completely different style from other rockers of her generation, and incredibly vibrant as an artist and person. Although Karen O is most known for her work as the frontman for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, she's becoming much more independent with her work and is working on releasing a solo album. Having contributed so much to other artists work, with Santigold, the soundtrack to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and certain tracks to Where The Wild Things Are, she's embedding herself strongly in the world of indie/rock music. Watching her perform at the Oscars was like getting a crumb from the most delicious cookie on Earth, and the rest of the chocolate chip goodness is going to follow soon. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and O have already announced more live shows to come, in a much more intimate setting, and it sounds like the perfect setup for a group as original and groundbreaking as them.

The old adage that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover - or perhaps, more relevantly in this case, by its title - is one that Canadian indie rockers Wintersleep have gone out of their way to prove correct over the course of the past decade or so; despite a band name that suggests quiet delicacy, they’ve instead carved out a sizable cult fanbase the world over with their brand of boisterous rock, which only occasionally touches upon mellow territory and instead is chiefly concerned with vocal harmonisation, energetic guitar lines and jammed out instrumental experimentation. Over the course of their career to date, they’ve enjoyed critical plaudits for their releases, especially Welcome to the Night Sky in 2007, which won the Juno award for new band of the year. Live, too, they’ve made a serious mark, enjoying high-profile support slots in the UK to the likes of White Lies and Frightened Rabbit as well as routing their own laps of the country that have taken them to packed-out, intimate rooms across Britain. Their last such jaunt, in October of 2012, saw them play five UK dates in their biggest venues yet, with career-spanning sets punctuated by frontman Paul Murphy’s lively interaction with the crowds.

The show was great, for the 5 or 6 Wintersleep songs I could see. Unfortunately, one or more Winnipeggers enjoying the show couldn’t seem to follow the cannabis laws, and thanks to their disregard for rules and others, I had to leave the show early since I couldn’t be in the theatre with my asthma.
The staff at the Garrick were amazing and actually found a guy and threw him out, but I still couldn’t go back in the auditorium and missed most of the show. Sound quality really suffers in the lobby! What I saw of it was great, and at least I got to hear Amerika! Maybe next time!

Accomplished band with a big yet haunting sound at times. They played the Commodore which was a good venue for them. Not a lot of talking, just got after making great sound, which I very much appreciate. Nice long set had me singing tunes all the way home.