Winter People – ‘Gallons’

This week I’m going into A&R blog mode, which in layman’s terms where I’ll be writing about a number of artists whom we’ve been keeping our eye on locally for sometime, watching as they’ve progressed and blossomed into very attractive sounding flowers. The first cab off the rank and sorely neglected on my behalf, though not for lack of trying, is Winter People. A ridiculously talented sextet from Sydney, this band have been around the country (and for those of you who live here, nothing is a short trip) a number of times and played gigs like they were going out of fashion, but were still waiting on their major break. It’s not like they didn’t have the goods; an effortlessly rugged frontman, two violinists who happen to be absolute guns at their instruments and arrangements that border on the majestic nine times out of ten. But for some reason or another, in the midst of the alternative-rock-psuedo-folk-boom that nearly swallowed Bon Iver whole and produced dozens of spin-offs locally including Boy & Bear, they just didn’t make enough noise. Personally, I always found that rather unfair because I think this band have more chops and some really original ideas that puts them markedly ahead of the rest. This, however, was something that only really came out live, particularly in this ornate rocker that’s like Smashing Pumpkins on an Arcade Fire trip. And now they’ve committed it to tape, so I can share it with the rest of you. Wasn’t that nice of them?

The frontman and creative fuel behind Winter People is Dylan Baskind, a remarkable chap who actually went to University with both editors of this here website and, like the older one, spent most of his time either sitting up the back not paying attention or requesting extensions on assignments because he’d been on tour. I’ve watched Baskind transform from a singer who hid behind his amazingly shaggy mane to one who is confident really leading a band. This translates to his vocal performance, which is perhaps at its strongest on ‘Gallons’ as it has been for a long time. A big thing for us when we hear new music is believability; is the person in charge of the melody – probably the only religious element left in popular music – trying to convince you of what they’re saying or that they, at a pinch, could be a version of some other singer you like? Baskind is certainly the latter; exercising his range and shaping the arc of the melody around his particularly rustic brand of lyricism. He’s aided by a rhythm section who know how to sit in the pocket and play around the chords rather than on top of them and what seems like five other people who can settle into harmony at the drop of a hat.

‘Gallons’ is the song I was waiting for to show off Winter People to our readers, because it’s got that great rumbling thunder behind it and rich production that allows the strings to really come out on top and add a sense of drama to the project. It also has a gut-wrenching final minute which twists and turns through time signatures and triplet grooves that comes out at the end leaving you with absolute shivers. It’s a slow build-up to one of the biggest fuck-off rock progressions I’ve heard in a while, but it’s totally worth the wait. Now that I’ve started playing music again myself after a long time away, I appreciate how much work goes into to doing something as complicated as this and making it sound so effortless; you’ve got to drill six separate people and make them memorise things the way you do, no matter how the song was written initially. It’s about dedication, something Dylan’s had ever since he was recording under another solo moniker and dropping CDs in our mailbox five years ago, which has led him to scoring Peter Katis, who has worked with Interpol and The National as the band’s mixing man for this track, despite an eternal wait to get it off the ground. You can hear that pay off with a track that indicates where Winter People will be going next, but as its own certainly stands up as our song of the day.

Winter People – ‘Gallons’