Canadian indie rock mainstays Wintersleep return with their eighth studio album Wishing Moon, released via Dine Alone Records.
For a band with this level of longevity, the album feels both expansive and revitalized.
Wishing Moon stands as one of their longest releases to date, and arguably their heaviest, leaning further into a harder rock sound than fans may expect.
Yet, rather than feeling like a departure, it comes across as a natural evolution—refined, confident, and fully realized.
Even this deep into their career, Wintersleep prove they can still sound fresh and engaging, delivering a record that balances weight and melody with ease.
About the album by Wintersleep:
Recorded at producer Nicolas Vernhes’ (The War on Drugs, Spoon) studio in the Mojave Desert near Pioneertown, the collection of 12 songs evidences a renewed vitality and energy: The band’s branches of prog-, indie-, folk-, and alternative-rock are in full bloom, stretching skyward with grateful, open, curious hearts.
Wishing Moon crackles with the energy of that sort of reinvigoration.
The opening title track throbs with a Wurlitzer electric piano before bass and drums set off at a steady clip, setting a dreamy kraut-rock scene that builds, slowly, to a crescendo of hammered keys and soaring guitars while Murphy cries on the chorus: ‘Temperamental, I’m alive, I’m alone/Transcendental, I’m alive, I’m alone’. “Stranger Now” follows, with heavy desert-rock chording and sand-smoothed fuzz leads. (D’Eon attributes the record’s atmosphere and macabre grooves to the Mojave, famously channeled in the ominous, titanic riffing of bands like Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age.) “The band’s always at its strongest when there’s a fundamental groove that’s rolling along,” remarks Campbell. “I just felt a natural gravitation when we got into the room, like this propulsion and relentlessness. There’s a certain meditation within the grooves.”
“Wait for the Tide” recalls pre-Wintersleep days, even, when Murphy and D’Eon created post-hardcore and prog-rock chaos in their high school band Kary.
“My Mind Always” centers on a hypnotic, off-kilter acoustic riff, an unsettling, stoned sway of a love song.
“Abyss” is an alt-rock endtimes anthem, feeling like it’s ready to pull apart at the seams at any moment despite its major-key gallop: ‘We’re living in the abyss now/In the life affirming bliss!’ Murphy sings.
For Murphy, the record demonstrates a band that still takes chances.
“We wanted to shake it up and do something more challenging,” he explains. That desire is partly why they chose to work with Vernhes, a producer they’d never created with. “We needed that energy of not knowing,” he continues. “I remember thinking that it should be uncomfortable, because it’s like getting in touch with who you are again, individually and as a group.
Songs are really intimate things, and getting a song right on a record is a really intimate process.
I think of collaboration with producers as a mirror, and felt especially in this case, it revealed a lot. Most importantly, I think Wishing Moon just has this living, breathing quality.”
Wishing Moon gets: 📷📷📷📷📷📷📷/10.
Wintersleep – Wishing Moon [Streaming]
