Winter's Fall: Missing Link from Alt to Strange Country

Winter's Fall
(self-titled)
Highly Recommended - Five Stars

Winter's Fall is a blending of My Morning Jacket's frightening-Kentucky-backwoods sound with Uncle Tupelo's straight-up alt-country-rock, but with just a dash of Neil Young thrown in for good measure. These guys can rock you, zone you out, and pull you right back in.

Lead singer Peter Stanley's voice is a high-pitched, nasal grit and very reminiscent of the "strange country" sound from bands like My Morning Jacket and Band of Horses. However, the band's instrumentation and arrangements are less lush and "indie-rock-ish." They tend towards a grittier, less melodramatic sound, much more reminiscent of Uncle Tupelo's whiskey-fueled ass-kicking grunge of "Still Feel Gone." There are heavily distorted electric guitars, driving bass & drums, airy electric pianos, and lots of pedal steel playing "spooky bird call" fills. Over all their instrumentation is very tasteful and suitable to their song material, which trends towards the moody and melancholy.

These aren't typical country songs of heart-ache and remorse, and they aren't "get drunk and laid" rock n' roll songs either. They're introspective, other-worldly, and yet so familiar. There is sadness, blame, and doubt. "Hillside" is a divorce song -- "I'll be giving you back your address, and you can give back my name," but it's so high energy and rocking you wouldn't notice. Let the intense song arrangements catch your ear first, and then notice the incredibly literate lyrics.

Their imagery is dark and dreamlike. We see glimpses of angels and broken houses, flickers of candlelight at night. "With my broken body fading, I passed out for the evening, and like an alarm ringing I dreamt of angels singing... they were muddy & white." (from "Muddy & White") "Don't say the night will be discovered by candlelight in the cupboard, by closing eyes, and acting stubborn... I have lost what never was safe." (from "Unusual Ways")

Winter's Fall epitomize the new "high lonesome" sound -- instead of being away and alone on a mountain in a wilderness (the old Bluegrass mystique), they're alone in a wilderness outside of a sprawling metropolis, on the edge of civilization, where things get real... and strange. It's audible Faulkner for the 21st century.

Over all I consider this album the "missing link" between the classic alt country bands of the 90s and early 2000s and the new "strange lonesome" sound of Indie Rock bands like My Morning Jacket and Fleet Foxes.

I recommend skipping their initial EP titled "Muddy & White" but absolutely recommend picking up the album (DRM-free!) from Amazon MP3, CD Baby, or iTunes. The EP had some early-band production problems that have completely disappeared in this first album.

The whole damn album is great, but the stand-out songs are as follows: "Hillside" for an up-tempo Uncle Tupelo rocker, "Paper Chains" for a Neil Young-esque ballad, and "These Ivory Days" for a indie-rock My Morning Jacket tune. "Blame", "Rain", and "Muddy & White" also disproportionately kick my ass.

(My only complaint about the whole album is that the trumpet on "Muddy & White" and "Lonely You" should be a fiddle... or maybe a steel guitar. The trumpet doesn't sound bad, it just seems out of place.)