Winterpills
All My Lovely Goners (Signature Sounds)Winterpills’ folk-pop travels a line tracing Simon & Garfunkel, mid-Seventies Fleetwood Mac, REM jangle, and the quiet thunder of Cowboy Junkies. All My Lovely Goners, the Massachusetts quintet’s fifth disc, abandons some of the loops and effects looming in its past work for more ensemble interaction. The results are the same glorious dreamscapes, only with a contented human face. Flora Reed and Phillip Price share vocal duties, but when they harmonize, as on the dour glow of “Small Bright Doses,” it’s Winterpills at full strength. Packaged with graphics that recall surrealist René Magritte, the band suggests that not everything is it appears. There’s joy among the insistent gray, as on the moments of psychedelia that pop up on the ghostly “January Rain.” Other groups make music this simple, but few match Winterpills in making melancholy sound this soothing. (Wed., 1am, TenOak)
This article appears in March 16 • 2012.