Sex, drugs, and rock and roll is the old cliché. But indie rock band Wintersleep chose a less extravagant lifestyle as they recorded their most recent album, Hello Hum.
“There was a badminton court [at the studio],” drummer Loel Campbell said. “We had a lot of laughs together and a lot of heated badminton moments.”
The JUNO award-winning band, originally from Halifax, also includes singer/guitarist Paul Murphy, two guitarists/keyboardists in Tim D’Eon and Jon Samuel, and bassist Mike Bigelow. Wintersleep recorded Hello Hum with producers Tony Doogan (Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian) and Dave Fridmann (Mercury Rev, the Flaming Lips) at Tarbox Road Studios in New York.
The mood in the studio was very relaxed, Campbell said. To record their previous album, New Inheritors, he said the band had to deal with anxiety going to and from the studio each day. This time, the band lived on-site at Tarbox Road, which Fridmann owns.
“We would just sleep there and wake up and all have our coffee together, and then get right back to what we started on the night before,” Campbell said. “Just very focused, and very fun.”
This, and the fact that the band also wrote the album while off tour, helped give Hello Hum a much lighter outlook than past Wintersleep albums, Campbell added. Themes from past records still carry through though.
“I think Paul has certain themes that he touches on, goes back to,” Campbell said. “You’ll see similar characters just touched on through different songs. But I think for the majority of the record, it’s pretty light.”
The band also looked to the past as they recorded the album.
“I think we were just aiming to make it as simple as possible to make music,” Campbell said with a chuckle. “To basically go back to where we started, but with a lot more knowledge of how to get the things in your head onto the speakers.”
The album sums up Wintersleep’s history as it enters its second decade, Campbell said. This longevity pushes the band to keep things lively, he added.
“Every year we do it is more pressure to do things better,” Campbell said. “We don’t think that we’re turning into a stale Can-Rock band.”
The band also reinterprets older songs live to keep things fresh. “Weighty Ghost,” Wintersleep’s biggest hit, has gone through many changes, Campbell said, while other songs give the band the chance to improvise freely. The band’s chemistry makes this ad-libbing a lot of fun, he added.
“It’s pretty intuitive the way that we approach things. Things will change, but it’s very natural, and we usually don’t even talk about it. It just kind of happens,” Campbell said, laughing.
It’s this fun that helps Wintersleep push on after more than ten years together, he added.
“Everybody cares about [the band] just as much as when we started,” Campbell said. “It’s interesting being in a band for so long, but it’s still really fun and we still really get along making music together.”
